


Hemorrhage (In My Hands)

by commoncomitatus



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hero Worship, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Early S1.  When one of their own is wounded by an enchanted weapon, our heroes race to acquire the cure.  A simple enough task, or it would be if they had any idea what it looks like.Ensemble, with a minor focus on Tripitaka/Sandy.  In which Tripitaka has angst, Sandy has pain, Monkey definitely does not have feelings, and Pigsy is the unsung hero we all deserve.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the May small fandom challenge over on [hurt/comfort bingo](https://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org), for the prompt ‘hiding an injury / illness’. I didn’t finish in time to meet the challenge deadline, but it got me out of a ten-month creative slump so it deserves a shout-out.
> 
> Warnings: references to violence and death, and a fair amount of blood.

***

If there’s one thing Tripitaka has learned in her short time travelling with three gods, it’s that words have meanings.

More than just the obvious ones, that is.

Words like ‘strength’, like ‘age’, like ‘identity’. Words she once took for granted, words that now mean so much more than she ever could have imagined.

Words have meanings, she’s learned, and so do names.

Like her name. _Tripitaka_ , the name that isn’t really hers at all. She doesn’t know what it means — what it actually means, that is, the letters, the spelling, the sound — but she knows that it has power. Power enough that she has to keep hold of it or risk something far worse than death. Power enough that she needs to take it and become it, to wrap it around herself tight enough to convince everyone — maybe even herself one day — that it really is hers. 

Like their names, too.

 _Monkey_ , powerful and agile and almost impossible to catch. Monkey, prone to throwing things at people for reasons ranging from ‘he was coming at you with a knife’ to ‘he smelled funny’ and everything in between. Tripitaka hasn’t quite figured out which of those habits gave him his name, but she secretly doubts it’s the one about power and agility.

 _Pigsy_ , fitting for more than just his size. Yes, he’s a glutton and not the least bit ashamed of it, and sure, he’ll do whatever it takes to get himself the best seat at the best table, but he’s also got a strong, generous heart and more courage than Tripitaka has ever seen.

Well. Almost.

She tries not to think too much of the Scholar, of the other monks — real monks, nothing like the shaky little thing she’s pretending to be — who gave their lives for a cause they’d never see realised. _That_ was courage, real human courage, and there is nothing in a god’s world to ever compare. But what she’s seen in Pigsy, even in the short time they’ve been travelling together, is as close as anything she’s seen thus far.

And then there’s _Sandy_. Who is...

Windswept.

It’s the best word Tripitaka can think of. The only word, really, for someone so strange and untouchable, so prone to slipping through her fingers. Occasionally she makes so much sense it’s frightening, but most of the time it’s like she can barely even remember her own name. No-one really knows which version of Sandy they’ll get on a given day, and Tripitaka is still learning when to ignore her rambling and when to stop and listen.

She should be better at that by now. She should know the difference.

She should know enough, at least, to pay attention when Sandy blurts out, seemingly out of nowhere, “Real gods don’t bleed.”

Monkey doesn’t pay attention, though. And Tripitaka is still wide-eyed enough to take her cues from him. Maybe she shouldn’t — he’s been moody and impatient all day — but it is what it is. He’s the one they’re all here for, as much as Sandy likes to think it’s the monk with the name, and he’s the one they listen to. The one Tripitaka listens to, at least.

He’s moving fast, and doesn’t stop. They’re all moving fast, and they can’t afford to stop. They’ve been on the run from a band of demons for hours now, chasing them for who they are or just for the fun of it; no-one knows and no-one’s stupid enough to ask, but it’s got Monkey in a bitter mood and all of them edgy enough not to stop and ponder existential questions.

All of them except Sandy, apparently, a fact that surprises absolutely no-one. Small wonder, then, that Monkey doesn’t even bat an eyelid; they’re all used to this by now.

He doesn’t stop or slow, but he does take a split-second to reply. It’s more than Tripitaka expected from him, even it it is little more than an impatient mutter thrown over his shoulder.

“Yes, they do.”

“Are you sure?” Sandy asks, in a strange small voice.

Pigsy laughs. He’s exhausted as usual, more breathless than the rest of them put together, but he still has strength enough to make light of things.

“You bled yesterday,” he reminds her. “When you cut yourself chopping potatoes. Remember?”

Sandy slows her pace for a short while, thinking about that. Thinking always seems like such a struggle for her, an impossible effort that takes minutes where it should take seconds.

“Oh,” she says, at last. “All right, then.”

Then she starts walking again, keeping pace with Monkey like the moment never happened.

Tripitaka really should know better than to shrug and do the same.

*

It’s another hour or two before they take a break.

Well. Before Pigsy decides to take a break, and the rest of them concede by necessity.

He falls to his knees in the dirt, wailing that he can’t possibly take another step, and then proves the point quite thoroughly by refusing to get up no matter how hard Monkey whacks him with his staff.

Monkey is angry. More so than he is already, even.

“If we get eaten,” he snaps, “it’ll be all your fault.”

“Demons don’t eat people,” Pigsy says. He’s panting, face pressed to the ground, and Tripitaka wonders how much of that is genuine breathlessness and how much is just a convenient excuse not to meet Monkey’s eye. “And they definitely don’t eat gods. Not unless they want a really bad case of indigestion, at least.”

Tripitaka wrinkles her nose, and tries not to think about that. “Lovely.”

“Besides,” Pigsy goes on, after a laboured moment. “If they were going to catch up with us, they’d’ve done it by now. I bet we scared them off after that last fight. Probably ran off crying to their mothers. You know, if demons have mothers.”

He’s not wrong. The part where they would have caught up if they were going to, that is. Probably not the other part; if Tripitaka’s memory serves, their performance in the last fight was less than stellar.

Still, she knows better than to expect the best, no matter how tempting it may be.

“Don’t assume we’re safe yet,” she says.

Sandy makes a strained, unhappy noise.

“Can’t run forever,” she says. “Exhaustion will kill us before they do.”

Like always, she sounds like she’s talking to herself, but the point is a valid one just the same. This time, Tripitaka pays attention.

“I still don’t see why we’re running at all,” Monkey grumbles. It’s a big part of why he’s so moody, the need to run instead of fight. “I could’ve taken them.”

“You tried,” Tripitaka reminds him. “Twice. They almost wiped the floor with you both times.”

“That’s not even a tiny bit true.”

“Actually...” Pigsy volunteers, then clears his throat when Monkey raises a warning fist. “Uh, carry on.”

Tripitaka sighs. It’s not the first time they’ve had this argument since daybreak, and she doubts it will be the last before nightfall.

“We’ve been through this,” she says. “You can’t lock horns with every demon that comes our way. Some of them are just stronger than you.”

“That’s _definitely_ not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Monkey—”

“No, it’s _not_.”

And so it goes, on and on and on. It’s beyond exhausting by now, and not just for her.

“Do they have to do this every time we take a break?” Pigsy sighs.

“So it seems,” Sandy says, like she’s not really listening to any of them. Then, very quietly, “Do gods really bleed?”

Jumping on the chance to back out of the argument he knows he won’t win, Monkey turns his glare on her.

“ _Yes_ ,” he snaps, taking out a little of his frustration on the one person who doesn’t deserve it. “We bleed, then we die. End of story. Happy now?”

Sandy blanches even paler than usual, which is really saying something. Tripitaka feels something uneasy stirring in the pit of her stomach, something a lot like worry.

“He’s exaggerating,” Pigsy says. “You didn’t die chopping potatoes, did you?”

“Don’t know.” She looks thoughtful. “Might have done.”

“No. No, that’s not a thing. You don’t...” He sighs again, then throws up his hands. “You know what, never mind. Point is, he’s exaggerating because he’s in a mood.”

Monkey growls low in his throat. “I’m not in a mood. I’m just _right_.”

“Same difference, eh?” Pigsy shoots back with a shrug.

Tripitaka ignores them both. She’s looking at Sandy, trying to hold onto the little place inside her that says this is a ‘stop and listen’ moment, not one to ignore. It’s so hard to tell the difference, even on a day when she’s not distracted by demons and Monkey and everything else, but the frown on Sandy’s face says that this is more than just... well, _Sandy_.

“You’re talking about this a lot,” Tripitaka says. Cautious and quiet, feeling it out. “Any reason for that?”

Sandy looks a little perplexed. Tripitaka might as well have asked her what colour the sky was, for all the comprehesion she shows.

“Curious,” she says, after a beat. “Is that allowed?”

“Of course it is.” Tripitaka keeps her voice low, her expression open. “It’s just... well, normally you would’ve been curious about nine or ten different subjects by now. Today, the only thing you want to talk about is this.” Sandy is still looking at her like she’s speaking a foreign tongue; Tripitaka swallows her frustration. “You’re unusually focused, that’s all.”

“Not unusual. Just focused.” She says it like that’s somehow a difference, like _focused_ doesn’t mean _unusual_ by default when she’s the one involved. “I can stop, if it bothers you?”

“It doesn’t bother me. I just...” She frowns. She’s spent so much time talking with Monkey, who gets angry at everything he doesn’t approve of, everything he sees as a threat; she’s not used to dealing with someone who only wants to make her happy. “I guess I’m just a little worried about you.”

“No need.” She doesn’t meet her eye, though. “But thank you.”

Tripitaka doesn’t give up just yet. “Are you sure?” she presses.

“Quite certain, yes.”

“Only, you’re talking about blood a lot.” Sandy shrugs, as if to say ‘so what’, and Tripitaka grinds her teeth. “Sandy. Did you get hurt in the last fight?”

“No.”

She says it much too quickly, though, and with too much certainty from someone who is never sure of anything. And she’s still not looking at her. Tripitaka’s heart beats a little faster.

“Are you—”

“Yes.”

“It’s just—”

“Please stop talking, Tripitaka. You’re giving me a headache.”

“He’s giving all of us a headache,” Monkey chimes in.

“Not me,” Pigsy says brightly. “ _You’re_ giving me a headache.”

Sandy looks them over. All three of them, one at a time, curious or maybe just confused. She narrows her pale, strange eyes, then spins on her heel and walks away.

“Perhaps, then,” she says softly, to herself, “you should all stop talking.”

*

They pick up the pace after that, when Monkey spots demon-shaped shadows gathering on the horizon.

He’s so eager for another fight that he almost doesn’t tell them about it. Tripitaka can see him waging a battle with himself, but common sense prevails — for once — before she has a chance to question him. 

“Demons,” he growls, curling his lip. And with that and a few well-chosen curses, off they go, on the run again for what feels like the hundredth time.

He and Sandy are right, though: they can’t keep running forever. Slowly but surely, Tripitaka is starting to realise it, and she hates that almost as much as she resents Monkey for being right.

Maybe trying to fight them again would be the easiest option, she thinks. They’re not the only ones who’ve been running since sun-up. Surely the demons are as exhausted as they are by now. Surely that would put them on equal ground. Slightly less unequal ground, at least? Surely it—

But then she looks at the others, and her optimism flickers and fades.

Monkey’s itching for a fight, of course, but he’s about the only one. Pigsy has been ready to drop for hours now, and he’s only getting worse with every minute he doesn’t get a real break.

And Sandy...

Well. Whatever she says, Tripitaka is still not convinced she isn’t hurt. No-one talks about blood as much as she has without a good reason, and her face is even paler now than it was before.

That’s a pretty big warning sign all by itself. Given how pallid she is on a good day, it shouldn’t even be _possible_ for her to get any whiter. Yet here she is, almost translucent, and Tripitaka is very, very worried.

Still, she’s as determined to fight as Monkey is, and it’s hard to really argue with her when she’s standing battle-ready with her feet apart, when her spine is straight and her grip is as strong as iron on her scythe.

“We should make a stand,” she’s saying. She’s not really speaking to anyone, just thinking out loud, as she often does to chase away the silence. “I don’t want to run any more.”

“Finally, some common sense,” Monkey says. “You hear that, monk? You’re the only one who doesn’t want to fight.”

“Didn’t say I _want_ to fight,” Sandy mutters, still mostly to herself. “Just said I don’t want to run any more. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of...” She closes her eyes for a beat or two, and seems to sway on her feet. “I’m tired.”

“So am I,” Pigsy chimes in. “Too tired for a fight, that’s for sure.”

Monkey growls his disgust. “Then go and hide in a corner with the monk, and let the real gods put an end to this.”

Sandy beams at that, like Monkey just poured the life back into her. She straightens up, grips her scythe a little tighter, and for a single breathless moment she seems almost indestructible.

Then she takes a step forward, loses her footing, and collapses.

Monkey is less than sympathetic. He stares at her for about half a second, then mutters something about doing everything all by himself and turns his back on the whole sorry affair.

Pigsy blinks, then shrugs his shoulders. “Watch your step,” he says, because apparently he thinks that’s helpful advice after the fact. “The ground’s pretty treacherous around here.”

Tripitaka doesn’t move. She’s paralysed; her blood feels like it’s frozen in her veins, her bones turned to splinters. “I don’t think the ground is the problem,” she says, very quietly.

“There is no problem,” Sandy says. She staggers back up to her feet, leaning heavily on her scythe and trying a little too hard to steady her breathing. “No problem here.”

“Oh, yeah?” Pigsy doesn’t sound so careless now. He’s staring down at the ground, the dislodged earth and grass where Sandy fell, and he’s turned very, very pale. “So what’s _that_ all about, then?”

And Tripitaka sees it too, looks down and _sees_ , and the chill in her veins spreads through her whole body.

She knew. She _knew_ , but it doesn’t matter, it didn’t prepare her at all. It doesn’t matter that she’s suspected for a while now, that her every nerve has been screaming that something wasn’t right. 

It doesn’t make any difference at all, knowing or suspecting or anything else, because seeing it — actually _seeing_ it, real and true and inescapable — is like a blow that shakes her right down to her soul, like all the air is rushing out of her in a single choked-out gasp. She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe or move or think. She can’t do anything but stand there, slack-jawed, and stare.

She’s never seen a god’s blood before. At least, not in any measurable quantity. Not like this, staining the dirt and the grass, the leaves and the world around them. She’s not seen that much blood of any kind since that night at the monastery, the Scholar and the real Tripitaka, since they—

The world lurches around her, spinning sickeningly. She tears her gaze away with a force of will, turns with her whole body until she can’t see anything at all. Not the blood soaking the ground. Not Pigsy, not Sandy. Nothing but the distant, distant skyline.

Behind her, Pigsy is panting raggedly; his breath rattles, a sound like Tripitaka’s insides feel.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks.

“Nothing to say.” Sandy sounds faint, like what little strength she had is gone now the truth is out. “I told you, real gods don’t bleed. It’s not real. Or maybe I’m not.” She chuckles a little, hazy and halfway mad. “Either way, it didn’t seem to be very important.”

Thunder rumbles as Pigsy cracks his knuckles. “You daft little—”

“How long?” Tripitaka croaks. It takes everything she has to get the words out, and she still can’t bring herself to turn around. “How long have you been walking around like that? How _long_?”

“Not so very long.” She says it so simply, like she’s distanced from it, dissociated or maybe just in denial. Tripitaka wishes she had the luxury of feeling the same way. “The last fight, just as you said. You know, you’re smarter than you think.”

Tripitaka opens her mouth to thank her, then thinks better of it. Now is not the time for revelling in compliments.

“That was hours ago,” she says instead, and her voice grows lower as the truth of it sinks in.

“Not so very long, really.” The stubbornness is infuriating. More so than Monkey’s, in a way, if not by much. “It’s all a matter of perspective, if you think about it.”

“No. No, time doesn’t work that way, Sandy.” She wrings her hands, angry and frustrated and helpless beyond words. “Time _passes_. Whether you want it to or not.”

“Either way,” Monkey interrupts sharply. “It should have stopped by now. Or it should have killed her. One of the two.”

It’s the first time in hours he’s had anything more to say than ‘can we fight now?’ or ‘this is stupid’, the first time he’s tried to offer anything constructive. It’s worrying that even he is putting aside his violent urges and paying attention to this.

He’s kneeling at Sandy’s side when Tripitaka turns back, fumbling with the buckles and tatters of her clothing, trying to get a proper look at the wound beneath. Sandy is back on the ground, sprawled out in a way that leaves Tripitaka wondering if Monkey just threw her down and set to work. She wouldn’t put it past him, reckless and foolish as he is, but now is not the time to ask about it. She watches, stomach tense, and tries to keep her heart from beating out of her chest.

“That is no ordinary wound,” he says at last.

And then it’s serious. Really, really serious.

For a moment, anyway. Then Pigsy says, “No _kidding_ , genius,” and Sandy laughs her high, half-mad laugh, and then it’s a little less serious.

Well. Less serious for them.

Less serious for gods, who don’t usually have to worry about things like this, like blood and pain and death. Less serious for gods, yes, and for humans who weren’t forced to watch the only family they ever knew get cut down by demons, left to die from wounds just like this.

For Tripitaka, though...

For Tripitiaka, it is still serious. It’s still _really_ serious. And she doesn’t know whether she wants to scream or cry.

Monkey is poking at the wound. He’s got a grim, sober look on his face, and doesn’t seem to notice or care when Sandy sucks in her breath and bites down on a whimper, the way the contact causes her pain. It’s not often he gets focused like this, and it’s more than a little frightening. It drives home the point that this _is_ serious, that it’s happening and it is real.

“Can’t you do something?” Pigsy says to Tripitaka. “You’re a monk. Don’t you people have, like, healing herbs or prayers or something?”

Tripitaka opens her mouth, fumbling for an excuse, something even remotely believable, but she’s saved from the inevitable humiliation by Monkey, who shakes his head.

“It wouldn’t help,” he says, then pokes at the wound again. Sandy moans, but otherwise does not complain. “Look.”

That’s about the last thing in the world Tripitaka wants to do, but she swallows hard and does as she’s told.

She has no experience with this sort of thing, couldn’t tell a good wound from a bad one on a human, much less on a god, but even she can tell there’s something strange at work here. The wound is seething, and the blood is more blue than red. Maybe that’s just Sandy — her skin is impossibly pale, even at the best of times — but there’s a sickly shimmer underneath the skin that whispers of _magic_ and _power_ , of something wholly unnatural.

Pigsy senses it too. He might not be the brightest among them, but he’s not nearly as stupid as most think. “What is that?” he asks in a hushed, tight voice. “What did they do to her?”

There’s no need to ask who _they_ are. Tripitaka’s heart misses a beat, then another.

Monkey squares his shoulders, sets his jaw. He stays where he is for a moment or two, one hand on the wound, the other steadying himself on the ground, then he pushes off with a violence that has the rest of them reeling backwards, and swings to his feet with murder in his eyes.

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” he says. His voice matches the look on his face; it’s low and blazing with rage. He hauls Pigsy to his feet with one hand, effortless and furious. “We’re going to find those demons. And we’re going to make them tell us exactly what they did to her. And then we’re going to kill them.” He locks eyes with Tripitaka. “Any objections?”

This time, Tripitaka doesn’t say a word.

*

She stays with Sandy while Monkey and Pigsy go demon-hunting.

It’s not pleasant for either of them.

Sandy is agitated, much more so even than usual. She refuses to sit down, refuses to heed the weakness in her, refuses to even acknowledge the blood or the pain or the damage. It’s like she thinks she can force her body into wellness, make the blood stop flowing just by wanting it. She’s pale and weak, shivering a little from pain or shock — or possibly from both — but she refuses to acknowledge it. Like she thinks ignoring the problem will make it go away. Like she thinks that’s what it means to be a god: willing her pain into submission.

And maybe it is, at that. How would Tripitaka know?

“I should be with them,” Sandy is mumbling, over and over again. She sounds feverish, frenzied. “Should be fighting. My blood, my body. My fight. I should be fighting. Should be—”

“You’re hurt,” Tripitaka says. It shouldn’t need explaining, really, but then that’s true of so many simple things that Sandy fails to grasp. “You can’t fight if you’re hurt.”

“Can so.” Her legs tremble, but she doesn’t fall. “I’ll prove it, if you let me.”

Tripitaka sighs. “Sandy, please sit down.”

“No.”

She’s pouting like a petulant child, but there’s something in her eyes that burns, something that says it’s not just about being difficult or stubborn. Tripitaka understands better than most the need to reach beyond her grasp, to try to twist herself into something more than she is; after all, the fate of the world depends on her doing the very same thing, becoming someone she is not.

That is not true for Sandy, though, and she has no reason to be pushing herself like this.

Not even a god can make herself strong if her body is failing. Not even a god can will the blood to stop if it won’t, or drive the pain away if it’s decided to stay. Given the gaps in Sandy’s knowledge, though, Tripitaka wonders if she genuinely doesn’t realise that.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” Tripitaka says, and thinks, _not like I do_. “We’re not going to think any less of you if you sit down for a minute to catch your breath.”

Sandy frowns. Her face is drawn, strain pulling tight lines that aren’t usually visible, and the look in her eyes is both defiant and vulnerable. She looks like she wants to cry but can’t remember how.

“You’re human,” she says, and there’s a heaviness in her voice that could be bitterness or hope or something else entirely. “And you’re a monk. All you know is prayer and kindness and...” She shakes her head, then looks dizzy. “You don’t know what they’re thinking. Monkey or Pigsy or... or any of the others.”

“There are no others,” Tripitaka says. “It’s just us. Monkey and Pigsy and me. And none of us think—”

“You don’t know that.” She sounds so weary, so upset. “You don’t know what they expect from one of their own. You don’t know anything about being a god.”

Tripitaka has a sneaking suspicion this isn’t really about her, or what she doesn’t know. Sandy is looking at her like she’s jealous, like maybe she wishes she were a human too, so she’d have an excuse to be as ignorant as one.

“Do you?” Tripitaka asks, softly and without the judgement she knows Sandy’s expecting. “You spent your life in a sewer, alone. What do you know about being a god, really?”

“I know that gods are strong.” Her eyes are glazed over, like she’s all but forgotten Tripitaka is there at all, like she isn’t really speaking, so much as reciting a lesson she memorised years ago. “I know they _need_ to be strong.”

“Not all the time,” Tripitaka says. It comes out like a whisper, shaky and uncertain but still somehow stronger than Sandy. “No-one can be strong all the time. Not a god, not a human, not even a demon. Everyone has moments of weakness, Sandy. Everyone.”

“Monkey doesn’t. Pigsy doesn’t.” She’s staring down at the ground, scuffing the blood-wet dirt with her boots. “ _You_ don’t.”

Tripitaka’s heart flutters, then aches. “I...”

“You’re not even a god,” Sandy whispers, and the awe in her voice sounds like something so much deeper. “But you’re strong all the time.”

“No, I’m not.” She blurts it out in a rush, desperate and ashamed. “I’m _weak_ , Sandy. I’m weak all the time, and I struggle all the time.” Her voice is breaking, hitching, but she doesn’t stop. “Everything is so hard, and so painful, and I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to be doing, and...” Another crack threatens to give her away; not even the youngest monk sounds quite so high or so afraid. “I’m not strong. I’m really, really not.”

“You have no idea—”

“No, _you_ have no idea.” It feels almost freeing to finally say it out loud, even just the smallest piece of it. “Sandy, I’m not doing anything remarkable here. I’m just doing the best I can in a very difficult situation.” She looks down at the ground, at the blood, then up at the pain lancing Sandy’s pale face. “You can’t expect more than that. From anyone.”

Sandy swallows hard. She looks small, so close to human.

“Even a god?” she asks, with a shakiness that says she truly doesn’t know.

Tripitaka finds her hand, and squeezes as tight as she can.

“Even a god,” she says, willing the conviction to turn her voice into a monk’s.

Sandy breathes, still shaky but a little less so. Stronger, for not needing to be.

“Well, then,” she says softly, “I suppose I should sit down.”

*

She’s still sitting — they both are, together — when Monkey and Pigsy return.

Sandy is faltering a little now, head resting on Tripitaka’s shoulder, twitching every now and then like she’s trying to fight sleep. She’s breathing shallowly, the wound on her side still pulsing blood, a slow sickening rhythm like a heartbeat, keeping time with the rise and fall of her chest. Looking at it makes Tripitaka feel ill, so she keeps her eyes on the horizon and Sandy’s hand tight in her own.

Monkey doesn’t look at them. He’s restless and angry and can’t seem to keep still. He paces in circles, squinting at the horizon or tugging at his tunic or twirling his staff, always moving, eyes and body never staying still long enough to take them in.

Tripitaka wonders what has him so agitated. Is he afraid, like she is, of seeing the blood? Does it bother him more than her, the brutal and unwanted reminder that his kind can bleed and die just as easily as hers? Or is he just afraid of seeing the pain in Sandy’s face and realising that he cares?

Pigsy is a little less squeamish. About the emotional part, at least. He doesn’t want to look at the blood any more than Tripitaka does, but at least he can look her in the eye when he asks, “She okay?”

Sandy cracks one eye open. “ _She_ can speak for herself, thank you very much.”

“Fine, sure, fine.” Pigsy looks at her face, though, and avoids her side. “ _You_ okay?”

“Yes.” She smiles a little, hazy and distant, and adds, “Pain’s a funny thing.”

“Yeah,” Pigsy says, looking deeply sad. “Yeah, it is.”

Tripitaka extricates herself from the tangle of Sandy’s limbs. They’re loose, much heavier than they look — or maybe that’s just her clothes; it’s hard to tell with all those straps and buckles — but she doesn’t resist when Tripitaka tries to move, repositioning her like a child’s toy, until she’s leaning not against a wiry not-a-monk’s body but against the thick trunk of a nearby tree. 

The tree will hold her weight well enough; it’s sturdy and much stronger than a girl pretending to be a boy. Tripitaka only hopes she will carry this conversation as easily.

“Did you find out what they did?” she asks, and is so afraid of the answer.

Monkey growls, low and furious. He studies the bark of the tree, the dirt and grass beneath his boots, the sharpened prongs of Pigsy’s rake. He studies the world around him in minute, infinitesimal detail, but he will not look at Sandy for even a second.

“Enchanted weapons,” he says in a quiet voice. “They inflict wounds that won’t heal. The magic keeps our blood from mending or...” He shrugs. Intellectual know-how isn’t his strongest point, and he’s not about to pretend otherwise. “Whatever it’s supposed to do.”

Tripitaka looks down at Sandy’s side. The blood is still running, hot and steady but very slow. Too slow to kill her any time soon, she’s sure.

“Why?” she wonders aloud. “It’ll be days before she dies from that. What’s the point?”

“That _is_ the point.”

Tripitaka frowns. “I still don’t—”

“It’s a _game_.” Pigsy spits the word like a poison, then clarifies, as if it’s needed, “For them, not us.”

“Obviously.” Monkey rolls his eyes, then turns back to Tripitaka. “They hunt gods for sport. Like animals. Wounds from their weapons... they’re enchanted to make it last as long as possible. They want to make us weak and slow so they can hunt us down and watch us die.” He swallows thickly, anger and nausea seeming to clog his throat. “It’s _supposed_ to take days, monk. That’s the _point_.”

Sandy looks like she wants to be sick. “Oh,” she says. “That’s not very nice.”

“No kidding,” Pigsy says.

Monkey ignores them both. “They want us to suffer. They want us to die slowly and painfully, so they can revel in it. They want us to know they’ve won, even when they haven’t.”

Pigsy makes a strangled, affirming noise. For just a second, he looks almost as angry as Monkey. It’s much more frightening on him, Tripitaka thinks, for being so much rarer.

“Reckoned it makes things ‘fair’,” he finishes softly. “Us being gods and all.”

Tripitaka tries to digest that, but finds that she can’t. Sandy’s eyes are closed now, and she wonders if it’s exhaustion or pain, or just that she doesn’t want to hear any more. Whichever it is, it makes Tripitaka want to take her hand again and not let go until she feels stronger, until the blood is cool and still, until they’ve found a way out of this that doesn’t end in days of pain and death.

“It doesn’t sound very fair to me,” she says quietly.

“That’s what I said,” Monkey says. “Right before I killed them all.”

Sandy opens her eyes. They’re bleary, unfocused, and she can’t seem to find Monkey’s face. “Is there a cure?” she asks. “Because I don’t think I’d like to die this way.”

Monkey turns away, face twisting with distress. At least, whatever his version of distress is. He’s not very good at having feelings, much less letting them show, and this is more than any of them are used to.

“Something called ‘maiden’s tears’,” Pigsy volunteers, because Monkey seems unable to speak. “Only, ah, he didn’t get the chance to tell us what it looks like before Monkey separated his head from his shoulders.” 

Tripitaka’s heart stops. Horrified and furious, she whirls to face Monkey. “Seriously?”

He’s still not looking at her, at any of them. She’s starting to understand why, but it’s no comfort at all. For a split second, blind with rage, she wants to strangle him.

“My staff slipped,” he says at last, and his voice is hollow.

It’s no excuse. Tripitaka seethes, furious. “Monkey—”

“I’m five hundred years out of practice, okay?” He’s snarling, though it’s hard to tell who he’s more angry with, her or himself or the demons. “It was an accident.”

Tripitaka throws up her hands. “An accident that might cost Sandy her life.”

“That won’t happen.” His voice is hard as steel, his eyes even harder. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Sure we will.” Pigsy tries to find a smile, but he can’t. “I mean, we’re three gods and a monk. Between us, we’ve gotta know every healing herb this side of the continent, right?”

“Speak for yourself,” Sandy murmurs distantly. “The only thing I know about is fish. I don’t imagine that will be much help.”

Tripitaka realises she’s blinking back tears. She says, “You can help by staying alive.”

Sandy looks up at her like the words give her strength, like _Tripitaka_ gives her strength, like she would defy more than just death if a monk with that name ordered it.

“I can do that,” she whispers.

And Tripitaka finds her hand and holds on tight, and prays like she really is a monk.

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

They make a beeline for the nearest forest.

It’s a breeding ground for herbs and medicines, the best place any of them can think of to search for a cure with no description. Tripitaka racks her brains for the Scholar’s teachings, recalling the fractured bits and pieces she picked up about the natural world and all its myriad miracles. She is no monk, for all that the others believe she is, but she grew up around them and she has learned their ways.

Enough to convince them, at least, or so she hopes.

Though she’s weak and unsteady, Sandy insists on walking under her own power. She is upset, frustrated with her body for betraying her, and perhaps a little with herself for getting hurt in the first place, and she refuses to be coddled with a stubbornness that almost — _almost_ — rivals Monkey’s.

“I can still walk,” she says. Though she’s only really speaking to herself, her eyes never leave Tripitaka’s. “Please, don’t take that away from me. Not yet.”

Though she doesn’t really approve, Tripitaka does understand, and so she nods.

“Not yet,” she agrees, and shoots Monkey a warning glare.

He’s not happy about it either, and is rather more vocal about the fact.

“This is stupid,” he mutters, though Tripitaka notes he hasn’t tried to stop her either; for all his machismo, there is compassion in him still. “She’s just slowing us down. It’s like she’s trying to dig her own grave.”

That’s not it at all, Tripitaka knows, and bites her tongue to keep from saying so.

It bothers her that he doesn’t understand, that he’s not even trying to understand — even though they all know he’d be a thousand times worse if he were in Sandy’s place — but she’s in no mood to make him see that.

She’s still angry with him for killing the demons who could have given them an answer, and angrier still for the way he refuses to apologise.

An _accident_ , he called it. And he seems to think that ‘accident’ means he doesn’t have to show remorse.

Tripitaka is so frustrated, so infuriated that she wants to scream. She wishes she were bigger and stronger than she is — bigger and stronger than _he_ is, given the choice — and she wishes she had more than a chant to get him in line. She would drag an apology out of him by force, if she didn’t know the force would make it meaningless.

Pigsy shows much more compassion. To everyone, as he so often does, but especially to Sandy.

Possibly he understands better than anyone gives him credit for, possibly he’s just grateful that he’s not the one slowing them down this time; either way, he doesn’t utter a word of complaint, and seems quite content to press on at whatever speed she can manage.

He brings up the rear, keeps close and gently nudges her upright when her strength fails or she stumbles. He’s surprisingly subtle about it, at least more so than the rest of them, and he takes great care to couch his concerns in comments about the terrain, about the environment, about anything except what it really is.

“It’s treacherous here,” he says, when she loses her balance, and “it’s slippery there,” when she staggers and falls against a tree. It’s masterful, the way he handles her, and of course Sandy lacks the self-awareness to notice.

Tripitaka does notice, though, and she is grateful beyond words.

He's the one who insists they take a break. Not for Sandy’s sake, he insists, but for his own. And of course no-one bothers to question it; everyone knows that Pigsy is tragically unfit.

“Just a few minutes,” he assures them, with a cheeriness that belies his supposed exhaustion.

Monkey is already muttering under his breath about time wasted. “Am I the only one taking this seriously?”

Tripitaka opens her mouth to say something she’ll likely regret, but Pigsy cuts her off before she can get a word out.

“If you’re still feeling perky,” he says to Monkey, “you can go and scout ahead. Get a look at the area, figure out where to go next, and spare the rest of us your whining. Everyone wins. Especially me.”

Monkey rolls his eyes but he doesn’t argue. He swings his staff a couple of times, experimentally, then spins on his heels and storms off without another word. His shoulders are tight, though, broadcasting his unhappiness louder than any diatribe.

Sandy watches him go with a puzzled expression. “You’d think he’d be in a better mood with the demons dead.”

Pigsy sighs. “He's feeling guilty,” he says. He’s toying with his rake, avoiding her eye, like he’s feeling a bit of Monkey’s shame as well, like maybe he blames himself for not stopping it in time. “He’s watching you get worse, and he knows it’s his fault.”

“Not true,” Sandy says. She looks deeply sad, though it’s hard to know how much of that is shame and how much is just pain. “I’m the one who was hurt. Not him. Stupid for him to blame himself for something I did.”

Pigsy opens his mouth, like he wants to correct her, then quickly shuts it again. He’s saying a whole lot more by not saying anything, Tripitaka thinks, and something sparks inside her head.

“I should go with him,” she hears herself say. “There could be more of those demons lurking out there, None of us should be alone.”

It’s an excuse, and a flimsy one at that. Tripitaka has many useful qualities — well, one or two — but her talent in a fight between demons and gods is certainly not one of them. If there are more enemies out there, and if they do take it upon themselves to go after Monkey, she wouldn’t be any more use at his side than she would be from half a mile away.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Sandy says. She looks very small, almost scared. “I’d rather you stayed here.”

Tripitaka frowns. “I won’t be gone long,” she says. “Try to rest, and I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll still be here,” Pigsy offers, sober but with empathy. “You trust me as well as him, right?”

“No.” It’s hilariously blunt. If her heart wasn’t strangling her throat, Tripitaka might have laughed. “No, I want Tripitaka.”

“Oh, that’s just charming.” He’s not really serious, but he plays the part well, diffusing the tension with the same expertise as he wields his rake. “What am I, chopped liver?”

“Don’t know. Are you?”

Tripitaka massages her temples. “Sandy,” she sighs, with as much patience as she has in her. Rather less than Pigsy, if she’s honest, and scarcely more than Monkey. “I promise I won’t be gone long. I just want to talk to Monkey for a minute.”

“Why can’t you do that when he comes back?”

She sounds so pitiful, and Tripitaka hates that she understands this as well, hates that the clinginess makes so much devastating sense. She tries not to think about it, the way Sandy looked at her when she first heard the name, the way she hit her knees and the light hit her face. Like her whole world had tilted on its axis, like her heart had started to beat for the very first time.

It’s a huge responsibility. It would be even for the real Tripitaka, a monk who spent his whole life readying for that moment and a thousand others like it. For a young girl who’s only pretending to be a monk, it’s too much by more than she can say.

She turns away, looks to the distance, the ripped-up holes in the underbrush where Monkey powered his way through.

“I won’t be gone long,” she says again, and hates that she can still hear the hitch in Sandy’s breath, the way she flinches. “Pigsy, try and keep her alive.”

“Will do, boss.” He sounds heavy now, the lightness gone from him. Tripitaka forces down the urge to turn around and apologise to him as well. “Try and knock some sense into Monkey’s thick head while you’re out there, eh?”

Tripitaka tries to smile. It’s a good thing she has her back to them, because she doesn’t succeed at all.

“I’ll try,” she says, and flees before she can change her mind.

*

She finds Monkey venting his frustrations on the native plant life, hacking away with his staff at anything he thinks is in his way. She watches in silence for a couple of minutes, then sighs and stages an intervention.

“I don’t think you’ll find many healing herbs that way.”

Monkey doesn’t even pause for breath. “Right,” he grits out, slashing at a nearby vine. “Because we’ve found so many doing it _your_ way.”

He snarls as he says it, then lashes out again with redoubled violence. His face contorts as he moves, lit up with impotent rage, and for a moment he is transformed into something terrible and terrifying. Tripitaka takes a couple of steps back, afraid of him in a way she very rarely is.

“It wasn’t really an accident,” she says, very quietly. “You killing that demon. Was it?”

He doesn’t look at her — that’s all right; she’s getting used to it by now — and he doesn’t say anything for a very long time. 

The telling, heavy silence is all the answer she needs, really, but she still wants to hear it from him. She wants him to be honest about this, to show even just the smallest sliver of remorse, to step up and take responsibility for once in his long, long life.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says at last, though he must realise there’s no point in lying. Even Pigsy could see through his clumsiness right now. “I told you what happened. You think I’d leave something out?”

“I think...” She takes a breath, steadies herself. Dealing with Monkey when he’s feeling defensive is like walking through a field full of traps; she has to watch each step very carefully or she’ll lose an appendage. “I think you might have… bent the truth.”

“Oh, _please_.” His eyes flash danger, but he lets his staff drop to his side, a show of surrender to the conversation, if not really to her. “All you monks care about is semantics. What this means, what that means, what everything means. Don’t we have more important things to worry about right now?”

Tripitaka thinks of Sandy, of her quiet, stubborn determination. She thinks of Pigsy, throwing himself into Monkey’s firing line so she won’t have to, making himself seem weak so she can pretend she’s strong for just another second, another heartbeat, another breath. She thinks of how noble he is, how touching those little acts that no-one else notices.

And then she looks at Monkey, and she sees for maybe the first time the arrogance she was warned about by the Scholar’s old friend.

“So that’s it?” she says, hoping that her voice sounds harder than she feels on the inside. It’s so difficult to challenge him when they’re standing side-by-side like this, when he is huge and hulking and so angry, when she is small and upset has only righteousness and sorrow on her side. “Your staff just _slipped_? That’s your story and you’re going to stick with it?”

“It’s…” But he can’t look her in the eye and sustain the lie. She knew — no, she _hoped_ — he wouldn’t. “Look. What’s done is done. Do the semantics really matter?”

“They do to me,” she says, but she doesn’t have the heart to add, _and I know they would to Sandy as well._

He doesn’t need to hear that part, though; her own disappointment, it seems, is enough. He glowers for a moment, heated and hyper-defensive, but then his shoulders slump and the staff clatters noisily to the ground.

“I lost my temper,” he confesses, a blurted-out rush of shame and anger.

Tripitaka had a feeling it was something like that. Aloud, she just says, “Oh.”

“Yeah.” He takes a breath, presses on. “We had him pinned and cornered. He knew his life was forfeit. He knew the only thing standing between him and the grave was that stupid little bit of information. He knew—” His eyes harden to stone, his arms swell as he balls his fists. “And he was _bragging_. Saying it’ll still be his kill, even if it takes days, even if he won’t be alive to see it. Like that’s all that matters. Like...”

He trails off. Tripitaka swallows uneasily. What was it he said earlier, about the demons? _They hunt gods for sport, like animals_. She hopes this is the last they’ve seen of that particular kind.

“So you killed him,” she says, somewhat unnecessarily. “Even though he was the only one who could have told us what this cure actually looks like.”

“He wasn’t going to tell us!” He’s shouting now, loud enough to disturb the nearby wildlife; a pair of birds take off from one of the trees in a frenzied rustle of leaves and panic. Tripitaka hopes Sandy and Pigsy can’t hear him from where they are. “He was going to take that secret to the grave, whether I helped him get there or not. He was _enjoying_ it, monk. He wanted to see us suffer. And I do not regret killing him for that.”

Tripitaka reels away from him, trying to process that.

She paces for a few minutes, picking out careful circles in the dirt, not looking at him or anything else, just trying to wrap her head around his words, trying to reconcile them with her ideals of right and wrong.

In the end, she supposes it doesn’t much matter whether he was right or not, whether he could have convinced the demons to talk somehow, whether he could ever really justify what he did. What’s done is done, and they can’t bring the dead back. Not that she’d really want to, given what she’s heard about them. And if Monkey really _believes_ he did the right thing—

She frowns.

“Why lie about it, then?” The question tugs unpleasantly at a cold place inside her. “Why pretend it was an accident if you genuinely thought it wouldn’t have made a difference?”

“Because I didn’t want her to think—”

He cuts himself off too quickly, wringing his hands, frustration pouring out through every line on his body.

Tripitaka knows that it’s difficult for him, talking about his feelings like this, opening up and being honest when it puts him at fault, but she likes to imagine it’s a little easier when it’s just the two of them alone, when the only one to judge him is the one who desperately wants to believe in him.

“Go on,” she urges gently.

He steadies himself, takes a moment, then sighs. “My temper is not worth more than her life. I didn’t want her to know that I forgot that, even for just a moment.” His voice cracks, just slightly. “No-one should ever feel forgotten. Not her, not anyone.”

It’s no surprise that he turns away after that, that confessing has left him too raw to face her. His arms and shoulders hunch, tension rippling through him, and it doesn’t take a monk — even a fake one — to see that this is personal for more than just the obvious reasons. It must be a terrible thing for a god, Tripitaka muses, the idea of being forgotten, of being lost and cast aside, to become less than a memory.

To Monkey, probably more than any other, that fear must be very, very real.

Tripitaka lets her hand brush his arm. Just the barest flicker of a touch, it hardly even counts as contact; she knows that he would never accept more.

“No-one’s getting forgotten,” she says, and lets him make of that whatever he likes. Simplicity works best with him, she’s learning, and now is not the time to try for something deeper.

He stiffens slightly, then clears his throat. It’s a warning — at least, it should be — but Tripitaka is still too much of an optimist, too hopeful to see what is right there in front of her, to remember that he is still _Monkey_ and he would sooner strangle a tender moment with his bare hands than admit he ever had one.

It’s not the first time today she should have seen a disaster coming but didn’t.

“Anyway,” he says, and there it is, the tremor in his tone that says they’re both going to regret this. “She shouldn’t have gotten hurt in the first place.”

Tripitaka frowns. “It was a fight,” she points out. “Injuries happen.”

“Not to us.” His fists clench again. He’s spitting the words like fire, like hatred, like he will do whatever it takes to convince himself that Sandy’s pain is her own doing, that she deserves what is happening to her. “We are supposed to be better than that.”

Tripitaka thinks about that. She thinks about Sandy, restless and upset, so desperate to prove that she is strong even when she is not.

Looking at Monkey now, it’s not so difficult to see where all that self-doubt came from. It’s been entirely too easy for her — the human — to dismiss his posturing as a god thing, but the others don’t have that luxury. Especially Sandy, who seems to know as little about godliness as Tripitaka, who wants nothing more than to be good enough even when she doesn’t know what it means.

She can’t afford to take Monkey’s arrogance at face value. She can’t afford to believe that the world is what he decrees, that there is no room for anything beyond his twisted definition of strength. None of them can afford that, and if he’s not careful, his expectations will get one of them killed.

If they haven’t already.

*

Returning to the others, they find Sandy sleeping fitfully and Pigsy watching over her.

He’s kneeling at her side with a drawn, worried look on his face, pressing a damp cloth to the wound to try and slow the blood, and Tripitaka is loathe to disturb him. He holds up his free hand as they draw close, a silent signal to keep quiet, and even Monkey has the sense to obey.

He doesn’t speak until he’s finished, until he replaces the tatters of her shirt to cover the pale skin and dark blood, and moves a short distance away. Even when he does speak, addressing Tripitaka and Monkey in a low whisper, his eyes never leave her face.

“Think the pain finally got to her,” he says. “She’s holding it together pretty well — really well, actually, she’s a heck of a trooper — but it’s still hard, you know?”

Tripitaka nods, and doesn’t look at Monkey. “For all of us,” she says sadly.

Monkey isn’t looking at her either, or at Pigsy or Sandy. He’s looking around again, at anything he can find to keep from looking at what matters. He’s agitated, angry and upset, and Tripitaka can tell it’s only a matter of time before he lashes out again, so desperate for someone or something else to blame, so desperate to keep from thinking about all the things he should have done differently.

“How’s the wound?” he asks Pigsy, though it’s clear by the edge in his voice that he doesn’t really want to know.

“A right bleeding pain.” It’s a growl, shot through with frustration and sympathy. “Uh. For her more than me, I’d imagine, though it’s no picnic for me either. I’ve got the blood slowed down to a crawl, but there’s no stopping it. And there’s not a blasted thing I can do about the pain.”

The way he says it, the queasy shudder in his voice, makes it clear which one of those he thinks is the bigger problem. Tripitaka saw enough suffering during her time at the monastery to suspect the same thing.

“Bad?” she asks, though she knows the answer already; she’s never seen that look on Pigsy’s face before.

“Yeah.” He works his jaw, then sighs like they’ve already lost. “Those demons knew what they were doing, all right. They wanted a slow, painful death, they’ll get one.”

Monkey snarls. Tripitaka rests a hand on his arm, soothing and restraining in equal measure, and tries to be the optimist they all need. It’s not easy, but one of them has to do it.

“Sandy’s stronger than either of you give her credit for,” she says. “If any one of us can beat this, I’d put my bets on her.”

“Thought monks weren’t allowed to gamble,” Pigsy says, quirking a brow.

She clears her throat. “Figuratively, of course. It’s a metaphor.”

“Ah. Course it is.”

“Anyway.” She feels herself flush, shame and self-loathing that has little to do with their current situation; it’s almost a relief, being ashamed of something simple, and she finds that she almost wants to relish it. “I just mean, Sandy’s a fighter—”

“Not much of one,” Monkey says. “She’s the one who let herself get hurt in the first place. And it’s not the first time, is it? I almost killed her two seconds after meeting her. Would have, too, without even breaking a sweat, if you hadn’t stopped me.” He’s just trying to diffuse responsibility, Tripitaka knows, but that doesn’t make the blow any softer. “Face it, monk: the only one weaker than her is _you_.”

There it is, and she can hardly believe how much it hurts.

It doesn’t matter that she knew it was coming, or that she knows exactly where it’s coming from, why he feels the need to lash out at everyone except himself. It doesn’t matter that she saw all of his hidden vulnerabilities just a few minutes ago, and it doesn’t matter that she understands. What matters is that it hurts.

“I see,” she says, gritting it out through clenched teeth.

Pigsy shakes his head, disgusted. “Seriously, Monkey? _Seriously_?”

“What? You know it’s true. I know it’s true. What’s the problem?” He says it like he really can’t see it, and that almost hurts worse. “He’s just a monk. A human monk, and not even a very good one. And _her_...” His voice betrays the emotion he’d never admit to, but still he doesn’t stop digging. “Well, you know what she’s like. You’ve seen her. Frankly, I’m surprised it took this long.”

“That’s enough,” Tripitaka barks, and it takes every ounce of self-control she has to keep from using the crown sutra to silence him for good. “You can’t make it hurt less by pretending you don’t care.”

“I’m not _pretending_ ,” he mutters. “I’m just...”

“We all know what you’re doing,” Pigsy murmurs. “And he’s right: it’s not gonna work.”

Monkey opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

“Sorry,” he says, gritting it out like the word is the worst kind of torture. He’s still not looking at either of them, though, or at Sandy, so it’s impossible to tell who he’s talking to. Maybe all three; maybe none of them. “I’m not very good at this whole ‘teamwork’ thing.”

“No kidding,” Pigsy snorts. Then, with a measure of effort, he hauls himself to his feet. “You two kids get some rest. I’m gonna go root around, see if I can’t find something that could be this blasted cure. Worth a shot, right?”

He doesn’t sound like he has much hope for success, though, and the pessimism — from him more than anyone else — makes Tripitaka feel very, very afraid.

“Worth a shot,” she echoes hollowly.

Pigsy ignores her. He’s looking back at Sandy, like he’s feeling guilty about leaving her, then fixes Monkey with a keen, narrow-eyed glare.

“Try not to disturb her with your bickering, yeah? Took me forever to get her to sleep, and I don’t want that effort wasted.”

Tripitaka ignores that. She fills the space Pigsy vacated, settling in next to Sandy’s still form, and keeps her eyes and her attention on the only thing that matters.

“Good luck,” she says.

“He’ll need it,” Monkey mutters, mostly to himself. “If I couldn’t find the stupid thing, _he_ doesn’t stand a chance.”

They’re all thinking it, sure, but that doesn’t make it any more unpleasant to hear. Pigsy glares at him like he’s just been accused of something awful, like there’s nothing more terrible in his mind than shattered hope.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

Monkey grunts. “Just telling it like it is.”

“Sure. Sure you are.” He throws up his hands in mock-defeat, then turns back to Tripitaka. “Have fun with that.”

And then he’s gone, leaving Tripitaka alone with two uncommunicative gods and her own unwanted thoughts.

*

She makes a point of not talking to Monkey.

Childish, maybe, but he deserves it, and in any case it’s not exactly difficult. Sandy may be quiet in her unconsciousness, but she still draws all the attention in her immediate vicinity; at least, she draws all of Tripitaka’s, like a magnet or the pull of the tide.

Her breathing is shallow and stuttering, her face twisted with pain, and it tugs at Tripitaka’s heart just to look at her. She leans in to push the hair back from her face, and Sandy moves as though by some long-buried instinct; she curls up against Tripitaka’s body like she was made to fit there, pressing up against her like she needs the contact for warmth. Suddenly it’s hard to remember Monkey’s there at all, much less that she’s upset with him, that his words still colour her skin with a hot, angry blush.

He doesn’t take kindly to being ignored, though. On more than one occasion, he pushes himself into her personal space, pouting, and says, “I _said_ I was sorry.”

Tripitaka ignores the words. “Be quiet,” she says instead. “You’ll wake her.”

He scowls, but does as he’s told and holds his tongue. For about a minute, that is, and then he forgets himself and the cycle begins all over again.  


And again, and again, and again.

Until Tripitaka wants to strangle him if that’s what it takes to keep him still and silent, until thinking of it is the only thing that keeps her from screaming at him, until—

Until Sandy whimpers and stirs against her, on the verge of waking, and the pain that gurgles in her throat makes Monkey turn so pale Tripitaka almost feels sorry for him.

Almost.

Tripitaka blocks him out, eyes closed against his panic, and focuses on the immediate task, the god more deserving of her compassion. With one hand under Sandy’s back to support her, she touches her face with the other, as soothing and tender as she can muster while Monkey is staring at them.

“Hey,” she says, a low whisper that she hopes comes out as comforting and not as terrified as she feels.

Sandy blinks her eyes open, bleary with sleep and pain.

“You came back,” she mumbles, so awed and breathless that Tripitaka wonders if she’s still dreaming a little bit.

“Of course we did.” She helps her to sit up some, and relief floods her chest when Sandy’s eyes slowly start to clear. “Where else would we go?”

“Dunno. Wouldn’t be the first…” She trails off, shaking her head, then seems to notice Monkey for the first time. “Oh. Hello, Monkey.”

He flinches a little, like she’s just thrown a punch. He’s a few steps back from them now, pacing again and looking terribly uncomfortable, like he doesn’t really know how to deal with an invalid. Sandy’s face warms a little at the sight of him, though, and Tripitaka wonders if she’d feel the same way if she knew the truth of what he did.

“You look awful,” he tells her, then immediately looks regretful.

“Monkey...” Tripitaka sighs.

Sandy chuckles, rather less offended. “True, I suppose.” She studies him. “So do you.”

“Yeah, well.” He bristles, but doesn’t deny it. “That’s your stupid fault. You’ve got us worried half to death, you idiot.”

“Oh.” She swallows a pained breath, and it’s hard to tell which one of them turns paler. “Sorry about that.”

Monkey swallows too, heavily. “You need to be stronger,” he says. “Faster. Smarter.”

Sandy goes tense. A shudder ripples through her body, the kind of pain that seems almost worse than the physical, and when it’s passed she’s left shivering.

As close as their bodies are, Tripitaka can feel it too, a shock that hums through her bones and veins. She wonders if she would still feel it even if they weren’t touching, if the memory of their earlier conversation, of Sandy’s desperate need to be strong, would be enough to make it hurt.

She hopes it would. She doesn’t ever want to be as blind, as utterly oblivious to other people’s feelings as Monkey seems to be.

“Don’t,” she growls at him, a tight-jawed warning. “Do _not_ do this now.”

He looks at her, raising a bemused eyebrow, but Tripitaka doesn’t back down. She knows how she looks, knows perfectly well that she’s the least intimidating person on the planet, but she doesn’t care.

It’s bad enough that he’s been venting his frustrations on her; at least she’s in a fit state to take it. But Sandy is not, at least not right now, and Tripitaka will not allow Monkey to cause her any more pain than she’s already in, intentionally or otherwise. She won’t let him ruin the friendship they might one day have just because lashing out is the only way he has of dealing with his emotions. She will not let him sabotage this too.

Sandy is shaking her head, like she’s forgotten Tripitaka is there at all. The brief flicker of humour is long gone from her now, leaving only a sorrow that burns through both their bodies and turns Tripitaka’s hot.

“Sorry,” Sandy says again, but this time it’s raw and stricken. “I’ll do better next time. Won’t get caught. Won’t do anything stupid.”

Monkey’s eyes are on her side now, on the blood. He’s staring at it, actually taking it in for the first time since he got back from his demon-slaying, and the look on his face is terrible to behold.

“Keep this up,” he says, deathly quiet, “and there won’t be a next time.”

He doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. Tripitaka knows that. He means to say that he’s worried she’ll die, worried this really will be the end for her. She knows it because she’s spoken to him, because she’s seen the fears he will never, ever admit to. She knows what he means, but that’s not how it comes out at all.

Not to Sandy, at least, who is so afraid of not being as strong as the other gods, of not being good enough. His words ring a different kind of death knell to her, and the fear of rejection that ripples through her is a physical thing, a monster waiting to rear up and swallow her whole.

She slumps against Tripitaka, surrender like one with no other choice, and though she doesn’t cry Tripitaka can feel the tears spasming under the surface where they touch.

“Oh,” she whispers, and it’s almost silent.

“No,” Tripitaka says, floundering to do some damage control. “No, Sandy, that’s not what he meant. It’s not—”

Monkey, of course, is utterly oblivious to the damage he’s done. Tripitaka would expect no less from him.

“It’s true,” he says. “She needs to get better, or else she’ll drag us all down with her.”

“Monkey, _stop_.” It comes out like a command, and it stops him in his tracks just as surely as if she’d used the chant. “Please, just stop.”

He opens and closes his mouth a handful of times. “But—”

“No. You’ve done enough.” She knows she’s no match for him, but the need to end this, to stop him before he does something worse, overpowers her smallness, her insecurities and lack of self-esteem. It turns her into something more than she thought she could be, something that feels almost like a real monk. “Go and help Pigsy. Or go and stand watch. Or find some quiet spot and take a nap. I don’t care. Just leave her alone and _stop talking_.”

For a long, unsettling moment, he only stares at her. His eyes are hot and defiant, like he wants so badly to challenge her but doesn’t quite have the courage, and she’s not sure whether to be angry or relieved about that. She wonders what it is that stops him, whether it’s fear of her wrath or fear that she’ll turn around and use the chant after all.

She won’t, of course. She wants him to do the right thing because it’s right, not because she’s forced him to. Maybe one day he’ll learn the difference as well.

After a long, tense moment, he throws up his hands. “Fine,” he says, and there’s so much bitterness in his voice that she knows he hasn’t learned a thing. “I’ll go help Pigsy. Better than sticking around where I’m not wanted.”

Tripitaka doesn’t bother to correct him. Better that he think that and storm off in a fit of temper than watch as he tries to justify himself and only makes everything worse. At least he’s doing what she said, and by his own choice; whatever his reason, however much he sulks about it, that’s something.

“Be careful,” she says, because for all his pouting she wants him to know that she still cares. “There could still be demons prowling out there. I don’t want you getting hurt too.”

“I won’t,” he mutters. The scowl is a poor shroud for his wounded pride. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Good,” Sandy says to herself. The words are low and distorted; they tangle in the fabric of Tripitaka’s tunic and hide where Monkey won’t hear them. “I’m glad one of us does.”

Heart hammering, ready to break, Tripitaka holds her close.

*

Alone, Sandy says, “Now do you understand, Tripitaka?”

She’s sitting up now, back against the tree, legs crossed and eyes closed like she’s meditating. Tripitaka has inched back a little way, giving her space to move and breathe, to test her limits and her body, and she’s trying without much success to be subtle in the way she watches her. It’s never been her strong point, subtlety, but if Sandy has noticed her staring — at her face, at her wound, at her pale skin — she doesn’t seem to mind.

“I understand,” Tripitaka says. She watches Sandy’s hands twitch, watches her throat convulse, watches all the little myriad ways her body resists what’s been done to it. “Of course I do.”

“I’m only useful to you as long as I’m strong enough.” Pain has made her eyelids heavy, but Tripitaka has a feeling it’s not the injury making her sound so broken. “I’m supposed to help you. I can’t do that if I’m a burden. I can’t. So if Monkey decides—”

“No.” The steel in her voice surprises her. She’s not sure where it comes from, but she feels it right down to her bones. “Monkey doesn’t get to decide who’s strong enough and who isn’t. We’re a team, all four of us. We decide _together_.”

Sandy considers that for a moment. She looks tired and pale, the pain and blood loss slowly taking its toll, but she’s doing much better than Tripitaka would have expected. Certainly better than she herself would be if their positions were reversed. She is proud of her, and awed by all the strength she swears she doesn’t possess.

How to make her see it, though? How to make her understand that surviving has made her stronger than anyone would ever believe?

She doesn’t get the chance to say anything, though. Sandy’s eyes snap open, and she shakes her head.

“Monkey knows things,” she says. “More than you know. Much, much more than I know. You heed what he says, and you do what he does.” Tripitaka opens her mouth to argue, but Sandy waves a hand to silence her. “I’ve seen the way you look to him, Tripitaka, and I’ve seen the way you look _at_ him. You would follow him to the ends of the world if needed. Just as...”

She trails off, stuttering, and her skin loses just a little of its translucency as she flushes hot. Tripitaka doesn’t need to ask what she wants to say, but she does it anyway.

“Just as...?”

Sandy looks at the ground. “...just as I would follow _you_.”

Well, it’s not exactly a secret. Tripitaka is all too aware of Sandy’s blind loyalty, of the years she spent in those awful sewers waiting and waiting for a monk with that name to appear and give her life meaning. She read the poems too; ‘a certain sense of devotion’, Sandy said, and that’s about all they had going for them.

Tripitaka doesn’t know how to deal with that. She doesn’t know how to be what they expect her to be, what they need her to be. 

She’s tried not to think too much about her stolen identity, beyond that it was necessary to get Monkey to listen to her, beyond that it was what the Scholar wanted. She’s tried not to think about what it might mean to other gods, to other humans, to demons, to the resistance, to the world. She’s worked very hard to keep all that as far away from her thoughts as possible, but Sandy is a constant reminder that it’s always there, inescapable, the name and its countless meanings.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she says, closing her mind to the thought, and to Sandy. “Follow me, I mean. I wasn’t exaggerating before: I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

Sandy doesn’t look up from the ground. For a moment or two, she seems almost entranced. Then, without warning, she’s on her feet, swaying only slightly as she grows dizzy. Tripitaka watches, her nails making little half-moon marks in her palms as she fights to keep from rushing to her side. She needs to keep a safe distance, now more than ever, and she needs to let Sandy at least try to be strong. For both their sakes, she stays where she is.

“My life is yours,” Sandy says. She’s gripping her scythe tightly, and Tripitaka can’t quite tell whether it’s to give her courage or just to keep her upright. “Before you came, I didn’t have one. I had nothing but your name, Tripitaka, for so long, and I...” She coughs, and her whole body goes rigid with pain. “My life began with you. So it is only right that I dedicate it to you. That I let it end for you, if that’s what must be done.”

The words twist, a knife in Tripitaka’s belly. She fights to keep from flinching. “Sandy, don’t.”

Finally, with some effort, Sandy looks up. Her eyes seem very pale under the shade of the trees, but they’re clear and focused, and they burn with all the strength her body lacks.

“He was coming for you,” she says, very quietly. “I don’t know why. Perhaps he wanted you out of the way so they could focus on their game. Perhaps not.” She sighs. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? But he was coming for you, and he would have killed you. So I stopped him, and then he stopped me.” There’s a spark in her as she says that, something like morbid laughter. “Fitting, isn’t it?”

Her smile is heartbreaking. Tripitaka turns away.

“I’m not worth that,” she whispers. “I’m really not.”

“Oh, but you are.” She sounds awestruck, infatuated. Tripitaka’s heart aches; even without looking at her, she can picture all too well the starry-eyed look on her face. “If the only thing I have to give you is my life, then I will gladly do so.”

For the first time, Tripitaka understands why Monkey is so furious all the time, why he resorts as he does to losing his temper and throwing his weight around. Anger surges up hot in her chest, not because she’s really angry but because it is easier to feel rage than pain, easier to lash out at the person who doesn’t deserve it than to look inside herself and realise that she’s the one who is unworthy.

She wants to take Sandy by the shirt and yell ‘I’m not Tripitaka, I’m not your salvation, I’m no-one’, but she can’t. Too much depends on her being that person, the person she isn’t, the person she will never be; the fate of the world and Monkey’s place in it, and so much more besides. She can’t afford to let out the lie, can’t afford to let Sandy or anyone else see the truth. If she does, it will be all over for far more than just them. Even thinking about it, she can almost feel the ground crumble to dust underneath her feet.

“Don’t.” It’s a command this time. She hates that, but not nearly as much as she hates the way it works. “Don’t say things like that. Don’t ever say that again, do you hear me?”

Sandy regards her silently. Her expression doesn’t change at all; she doesn’t look hurt or angry or upset, looks exactly the same as before. For her, nothing has changed. Tripitaka hates that as well, so, so much.

“As you wish, Tripitaka.”

And just like that, the conversation is over. She touches the wound on her side, a ponderous, pained expression on her face, and turns away like they were never speaking at all.

Tripitaka sucks in a deep breath, holds it and hates herself. “Sandy...”

But Sandy has already moved on. “This needs to be cleaned,” she says, calm and matter-of-fact despite the obvious pain. “I’m going to do that. You can stay here if you like. I promise not to fall into the river and drown.”

That’s not exactly comforting, but Tripitaka refrains from saying so.

“I’ll come with you,” she says instead, and pretends not to notice the way Sandy grows steady or the way her smile lights up her face.

*

At the river, Sandy sets to work cleaning the wound.

She moves like someone who knows exactly what she’s doing, like she’s done this sort of thing a thousand times before. And maybe she has; Tripitaka knows so little about her, she wouldn’t know.

What she does know is that the river responds to Sandy’s touch. It shifts and shimmers, rippling wherever she places her hands, little bubbles dancing over and across her skin like a kiss from a loving mother. It’s mesmerising, enchanting, and for a short time Tripitaka is awed.

Sandy talks as she works, and that is rather less enchanting. It’s hard to know who she’s speaking to, Tripitaka or herself, but Tripitaka sorely wishes that she wouldn’t speak at all. Sandy does not know much about anything, but she knows least of all about what makes a pleasant conversation-starter.

“Have you ever tried to clean a wound with sewer water?” she says, calm and almost cheerful, like it’s not the most morbid thing in the world. “Bad idea. Awful. Fevers, sickness.” She shudders. “I don’t recommend it.”

Tripitaka closes her eyes, and tries very hard not to think about it. “Why would you do something like that?” she asks.

“What else was there?” Head bowed, face framed by her hair, she looks ashamed and very, very young. “And I didn’t know any better.”

Tripitaka doesn’t know what to say to that. She often feels that way with Sandy — who is seldom coherent, even at the best of times — but this time feels heavier than usual, more important somehow. She wants to try, wants to make Sandy see that they are closer to each other than either of them wants to believe, but she doesn’t know where to begin. She doesn’t know how to talk to a god — even this god, as disjointed and peculiar as she is — like she’s just another person.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and feels like a fool.

Sandy doesn’t look up. Drops of water glisten on her skin; the wound hisses where it touches.

“I got better,” she says, absent and distracted, like that was the point of this, like it could never have been about anything else.

“I assumed as much.” It’s gentle, but chiding. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.”

“No, you don’t understand.” She looks at her like a child, like someone who knows they lack the words to convey what they want to say. “I mean, I recovered, yes, but I improved too. I _learned_.” Her eyes catch the light as she ducks her head again, and they’re bright and wet. “I can learn, Tripitaka. I promise you, I can learn.”

Tripitaka does not doubt that for an instant. But it’s not the point. It should never be the point, for any of them.

“Forget about that,” she says, with urgency. “Forget about learning or being stronger or better or whatever else. Forget about every stupid thing Monkey put into your head.” She looks down at the wound, the way the blood seems to burn where the water touches it, and feels her heart stall. “The only thing you need to worry about is getting better.” Off Sandy’s eager look, she quickly shakes her head. “No. No, not like that. Not improving or learning, or any of that. Just _recovering_. Just staying _alive_. Just...”

She sighs. She hates that any of this needs to be said. For immortal beings, the gods she’s met seem terribly simple and easily damaged. She wonders if that’s a product of the dark ages they’re living in or if the old stories were exaggerated all along. How hard would it be, she thinks, to make Monkey bleed and suffer like this? How much would it take to make him doubt himself, to make him believe he’s not strong enough?

Oblivious to all of that, Sandy just nods. She’s gazing down at her reflection, and her expression ripples with the water; it catches the sunlight, glinting and ethereal, and for a moment Tripitaka is taken back to that moment in the sewer, where she heard the name and fell to her knees and came to life.

“I’ll try my best,” she says.

Tripitaka moves closer, looks down into the water too, to meet Sandy’s eyes and her own. For all of their physical differences, their reflections are so much alike it almost hurts: two lost souls, too young for the world they’ve been thrown into, both trying so desperately to be more than they are. 

She closes her eyes, waits for the vision to fade, but it doesn’t.

“That’s all any of us can do,” she says, soft and sad and to herself. “Try our best, and hope it’s enough.”

*


	3. Chapter 3

*

They try seven different herbs before nightfall, with no success.

The first three show no discernible effects at all. By the time they get the fourth back to camp, Pigsy is sporting a painful rash in all the places it touched the skin, so Sandy wisely refuses to let it anywhere near hers. The fifth helps to slow the bleeding but makes the pain worse; the sixth eases the pain a little but makes the blood run quicker.

The seventh, though it offers nothing to heal the wound or to ease to the pain, does add a nice kick to the evening meal.

“This is pointless,” Monkey grumbles. He’s poking moodily at his stew, scowling into the bowl, no doubt because he knows it’s safer than looking around at his companions. “We could turn this entire forest upside-down and still be no closer to a cure.”

“And whose fault is that?” Pigsy isn’t often belligerent, especially when he’s eating, but even he seems to be at his wits’ end this evening. He’s said barely more than two words since a quick dip in the river cleared up the rash, and even now he keeps an uncharacteristic distance from the rest of them. “You’re the one who killed that blasted demon before he could tell us what we need to know. So maybe you should be the one to stay up all night foraging for more.”

Tripitaka sighs. She’s tired — they’re all tired — and the bickering isn’t helping at all. “Can we not do this now?” she asks.

“Yes,” Sandy says. She’s staring into her bowl too, toying miserably with her food and not really eating. “You’re ruining a perfectly good meal.”

“You’ve got a pretty loose definition of ‘good’,” Monkey mutters. “What is this, anyway? Or do I not want to know?”

Pigsy shrugs his big shoulders, punctuating it with an exaggerated, pointed mouthful. He’s the only one of them with any talent in the kitchen — or their meagre campfire, such as it is — and so he takes the slight rather more personally than the others.  


“Little bit of this, little bit of that.” He shrugs again. “Same as usual. So quit your whining, unless you’d rather eat bark.”

No doubt sensing he’s on thin ice with all of them now, Monkey just grunts and dives back into his stew with no further commentary. 

Tripitaka is grateful for his restraint. She’s too tired to argue with him right now, and in any case she doesn’t want to. They’ll have to talk things through eventually, she knows, but with everyone’s nerves as frayed as they are, it’ll have to wait until the morning. Assuming, of course, that his self-control will hold out that long.

In that, at least, she does believe in him.

They all eat quietly, herself included, and that’s more of an effort than it has ever been before. The food is decent enough — a bit spicier than usual, thanks to the additional herb, but otherwise fine — but Tripitaka finds that her appetite has vanished entirely.

Her stomach is knotted with worry, and it only grows tighter every time she looks over the fire at her friends, every time she sees Sandy’s vacant expression or the pallour of her skin, every time she sees the bowl shaking in Monkey’s hands and can’t figure out whether it’s anger or grief, every time she sees Pigsy sigh and shake his head.

It’s hard to focus on normal, mundane tasks, the mechanical motion of eating, of keeping her breathing rhythmic and clean, of not giving in to panic. It’s hard to want to do those things, to feel and act and pretend that everything is normal, when she knows it’s so much the opposite.

After a few minutes of drawn-out, awkward silence, Sandy pushes her bowl away.

“It’s very good, Pigsy,” she says, though the look on her face says something quite different. “I’m just not very hungry at the moment.”

“Yeah, I know.” His voice drops about an octave when he speaks to her. He’s speaking softly now, in a way he didn’t with Monkey, in a way he almost never does with any of them, and when he eases the bowl back into her hands it’s with unbearable gentleness. “But try and get a little more in you, eh?”

“Can’t,” she mumbles, with a pout that says ‘don’t want to’.

“Just a little,” he presses. “Just enough to keep your strength up.” His hands are shaking too, Tripitaka notes, and so is his voice; he’s not nearly as unaffected as he’s pretending to be. “You think you can manage that, at least?”

“No.”

Her guileless honesty is not nearly so endearing as it usually is. Pigsy sighs his surrender.

“Well, all right, then.” He pats her arm. “Just do what you can, yeah?”

The pout doesn’t go away, but she does as he says. Or tries to, at least. They all do, Tripitaka included, but it’s far from enjoyable.

It’s an unpleasant feeling. This is the first time the evening meal has been a source of friction instead of comfort, and they’re all feeling the weight of it. Most days, it’s about the only time when everyone is cheerful — or, in Monkey’s case, almost-civil — but today it’s a struggle against more than just the inevitable loss of appetite.

Looking around, Tripitaka sees only misery in all their faces. Sandy’s is twisted with pain, Monkey’s with anger and frustration and perhaps a faint flicker of guilt. Pigsy is trying, at least, to find his usual smile, but even he seems to realise it’s a hopeless cause. It’s like watching the stars disappear from the night sky, one by one, until all that’s left is cold and dark.

Tripitaka doesn’t know what to say, what to do, even what to think. She feels useless, more even than usual, and she hates herself for being so out of her depth.

If she were a real monk, she thinks, would she know more? Would she know the right thing to do, would she recognise the right cure on sight? Would the real Tripitaka have already saved Sandy’s life and moved on? Would he have banished the arrogance from Monkey’s thick head? Would he have found the scrolls by now?

She knows the answer. At least, she thinks she does. But she still thinks about it, and she still feels incompetent and so, so small.

When Sandy has eaten what little more she can manage, when Pigsy finally allows her to give up, she lies down and rolls over onto her side. It’s quite deliberate, Tripitaka can tell, the way she turns her back to them, to hide her face and try to hide her pain; it’s a noble effort, but all the hiding in the world can’t cover the shaking of her shoulders, and she’s not fooling anyone.

Pigsy leans over her, rubbing her back with a large hand. Sandy doesn’t resist, but she doesn’t relax either.

“Get some rest,” he says, still impossibly gentle despite the lack of response. “Recharge the ol’ inner fire so you can keep fighting the good fight.”

“Doesn’t feel like a good fight to me,” Sandy mumbles. She’s got her hands pressed to her face, and the words are muffled against the sleeve of her shirt. “Feels quite bad, actually. Very.” She sits up a little, just enough to look at Pigsy and not the others. “I’m tired of fighting, Pigsy. And I don’t feel good at all.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s hard. But you’ve got this, and we’ve got you.” He eases her back down, keeps his palm flat across her back until she settles. “Rest up, yeah? It’ll be less hard in the morning.”

Tripitaka watches as Sandy’s breathing grows slow, as her shoulders and her limbs slowly, slowly stop shaking. Even the stillness looks like a struggle.

 _I really hope so,_ she thinks, and swallows a wave of tears. _For all of us_.

*

She wakes in the middle of the night to Pigsy’s boot in her ribs, and a low, rumbling, “Your turn to stand watch.”

Given what she was halfway expecting — bad news, worse news, the worst possible news — it’s no burden at all.

Tripitaka stumbles up to her feet, still a little groggy, and looks around. Everything seems quiet enough, nothing out of place, and the placid look on Pigsy’s face says that his turn at watch was uneventful. Normally that would be enough to set her mind at ease, but there’s nothing normal about tonight.

Tonight, there’s more than just the fear of lurking demons or wild animals prowling in the forest, and the knot in her stomach does not loosen just because the world is quiet.

“How is she?” she asks, not bothering to pretend that her thoughts are anywhere else. “Is she still with us?”

Pigsy nods, but there are cracks in his grin that make her wonder.

“Still kicking.” His eyes dart about as he says it, though, like he’s uneasy or upset. It’s hard to tell; he’s so rarely either of those things, she finds she doesn’t really know what they look like on him. “A bit too hard, if you want the truth of it.”

“What do you mean? The way she is right now, isn’t any kind of kicking a good thing?”

He sighs, glancing back over his shoulder, and Tripitaka follows his gaze. Sandy is still lying on her side; she’s mostly still and quiet, though she shifts or moans in her sleep every now and then. She doesn’t look like she’s at peace, not at all, but she is very much alive, and at least as far as Tripitaka cares that’s the only thing that matters.

Pigsy clenches his jaw, like he doesn’t agree. 

“Bad dreams,” he explains. “Sounds like it, anyway. About you.”

After everything that’s happened, it’s not really a surprise. Still, she pretends it is. “Me?”

“Unless there’s another Tripitaka out there somewhere.”

He laughs at the idea, but she does not. It’s too close, too much, and she has to turn away or risk exposing herself. “I see.”

“Yeah.” He’s oblivious to her discomfort, thankfully. “She keeps calling your name, over and over. Dunno if she’s scared for you or of you, but she’s definitely scared.” Tripitaka tries to hide her grimace, but the way he wrinkles his forehead says she’s not successful. “Over and over. I tell you, it’s enough to drive a god to madness.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, is it?” He leans in, hunching his shoulders so he’s close enough to look her in the eye. “Now, I can’t pretend to know what’s going on in that scrambled head of hers, but if I was a betting man...”

Despite herself, Tripitaka chuckles. “You _are_ a betting man.”

He shrugs, and for just a fraction of a second the grin that lights up his face is wonderfully real. “Then I know what I’m talking about, don’t I?”

But the moment dies too fast, and the warmth falls off his face as his eyes fall on Sandy again. All too quickly, he’s serious again and Tripitaka’s stomach is knotted worse than before.

“Look,” he goes on. “I don’t know what she’s about, or what you are. Don’t bother myself to care about other people’s affairs, frankly. Got my own to worry about.”

Tripitaka swallows a wry smile. “You’re not the best person to judge,” she observes.

“My point exactly.” It’s light, but tight; she suspects Locke is still a sore subject for him, and probably will be for quite some time. “But the way she looks at you sometimes? Like you hang the moon, like you’re her whole world? That’s something else. And it’s not something to take lightly.”

“I’m not taking it lightly.” She feels her face grow hot, feels that unwanted anger start to rise again, but she forces it back down. She won’t be like Monkey, lashing out at everything he doesn’t want to hear or see or think about. No matter what, she won’t be like that. “But I’m not the person she thinks I am.”

 _I’m not the person any of you think I am_ , she means.

“You sure about that?”

“Yes!” It comes out like a shout, one she hastily reins in for fear of waking the others. “She thinks my showing up in that sewer gave her a reason to live. Or maybe a reason to die, I’m not exactly sure.”

“I’d wager she’s not either.” He says it like he’s said everything tonight, softly and with warmth; if she wasn’t so frustrated, Tripitaka might find it comforting. “She was alone for a really long time, you know? Like, most of her life, as I understand it. All that solitude, it’ll mess with your head something chronic. Small wonder she’s so confused.”

“She’s not the only one,” Tripitaka sighs. “But I can’t be what she wants me to be. I can’t be her saviour or her hero or whatever it is she sees when she looks at me. I can’t carry her on my back as well as everything else. I’m not big enough or tough enough or… or anything. I’m just a—” Her voice cracks, almost giving away more than she intends. “I’m just a _monk_. I’m not a god.”

Pigsy chuckles sadly, and squeezes her shoulder. “No kidding. I mean, I am a god, and I sure wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

Tripitaka looks down at his hand, big and powerful but so gentle when he wants it to be. She looks up into his face, finds the same thing there, more compassion than the rest of them put together, patience and warmth and the weary strength of someone who knows exactly how many sins they have still to atone for. The strength baffles her, the compassion awes her.

“I don’t blame you,” she says quietly. “But I think maybe you should be.”

She watches Sandy move in her sleep, restless and fearful but weighted down by her body’s weakness. She can see her name — the name that isn’t really hers — taking form on her lips, but all that comes out when she tries to speak is a hoarse whimper. Her face, contorted in a rictus of pain and distress, is a horrible thing to see, and it takes every ounce of self-restraint Tripitaka has not to turn her face away, not to turn around and run.

Pigsy watches too, but he lacks Tripitaka’s control; he only manages a moment, then he does look away.

“Nah,” he says, a little ashamed. “I’m no good under pressure.”

“Yes, you are.” It’s true, whether he wants to admit it or not. “I saw the way you were with her when we were walking. Supporting her, keeping her strong. Pretending you were the one who needed to rest so she could pretend she didn’t. The way you got her to eat, got her to sleep...” Thinking of it almost brings a smile to her face, but it’s not enough. “You’re so good with her. With all of us.”

“Just doing my job.” He shrugs again, but there’s the hint of a flush climbing his neck. Tripitaka wonders how long it’s been since he was valued for more than just his muscle. “Someone has to keep you idiots in line. You’d all jump off a cliff if I wasn’t here.”

He thinks he’s joking, but it’s not funny to Tripitaka. She knows that it’s true — figuratively, if probably not literally — and she can’t understand how Monkey and Sandy don’t know it as well.

“You should be the one they follow,” she says. “Not me.”

“No way,” he says, very seriously. “Look. The name carries power, sure, but it’s not just about that. Do you really think you could’ve convinced me to give up the high life just by telling me who you are?” He shakes his head for emphasis. “Not a _chance_.”

Tripitaka isn’t so sure about that. “You were just looking for an excuse to do the right thing,” she says. “Whether you want to admit it or not.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” It’s obvious he doesn’t believe it; she wonders what it will take to make him see the good in himself, the pure heart that she sees. “Point is, that charming little name of yours wouldn’t mean a blasted thing if you couldn’t back it up with who you are.” His eyes catch the light, glinting with mischief and affection, and Tripitaka feels so warm. “Don’t buy into your own hype, kid, okay? You’re more than just the name.”

Tripitaka swallows hard. She wonders if he would still be saying all of this if he knew the truth, if he knew that she doesn’t even have the name, that the one part of her that carries power is a lie. Pigsy is the most easy-going god she’s ever met — and more so than most humans, too — but she doubts even he would take that revelation lying down.

He’s not the one she’s afraid of disappointing, though. He’s not Monkey with his arrogance and his violent temper, or Sandy with her infatuation and hero worship. He’s just Pigsy, simple and straightforward and completely honest about everything, and even the hardest truth stings a little bit less when it comes from him.

Maybe that’s why she’s able to find a smile now, weak and shaky though it is.

“I’m glad one of us has faith in me,” she says.

“More than just one,” Pigsy tells her. His eyes fall on Sandy again, and his shoulders grow tighter. “Y’know, it’s pretty quiet out here tonight. I reckon another shift wouldn’t kill me.”

It’s thoughtful, but Tripitaka shakes her head. “I’m awake now. I don’t need—”

“I wasn’t suggesting you go back to sleep, you mutton-brain.” His grin gleams, even in the darkness. “I was suggesting you go and check up on her. Maybe having you close will quiet her down a bit.” 

“Oh.”

His whole body softens in a sigh. “All right, fine. If you _happen_ to go back to sleep _while_ you’re checking up on her...” He spreads his arms wide. “Well, Monkey doesn’t need to know, does he?”

Tripitaka nods her appreciation, though she really doubts that will happen. Whether or not Sandy quiets down, the idea of being close to her, of pretending even for a moment that she is worthy of all that bottled-up adoration is a far more effective wake-up call than a boot to the ribs.

Still, Pigsy is looking at her like he knows something she doesn’t, and it’s so hard to turn him down when he’s the only one among them who talks to her like she’s not the chosen one, like she’s the normal, boring, useless human that she is. His smile is easy and honest, if a little strained at the edges right now, and his eyes are bright and crinkled with — probably feigned — cheeriness, and Tripitaka feels more like herself in small stolen moments like this than she does in all the hours she spends with Monkey or Sandy.

She smiles. Real, or something close to it.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

And Pigsy laughs like there’s nothing wrong at all, like everything is exactly as it should be, and Tripitaka wishes so, so badly that she could believe it too.

*

Sandy doesn’t stir when Tripitaka sits down next to her, but she does when she leans in close and whispers her name.

More than just stirs, she jolts awake, shuddering and choking like she’s being dragged back to life, like Tripitaka’s voice is a tether hauling her up and out of a place with no air. Her eyes are wide and wild when they fly open, and for a long moment they stay that way, blind and unfocused, like she’s still in a dream, still haunted by whatever visions had her calling—

“Tripitaka!”

The name is a gasping, desperate wail, but even though she’s looking right into her face it’s like she doesn’t see her at all.

Tripitaka takes Sandy’s face in her hands, tries to hold her still, help her eyes to focus. Her skin is hot to the touch but just as colourless as ever, a fever with no flush.

“I’m here,” she says. Soft, gentle, soothing, at least as much as she can. “You’re dreaming.”

It takes a long, terrible moment. Sandy doesn’t resist her touch, but she’s shivering much too hard for someone as hot as she is. It’s like she’s struggling on the inside, fighting with so much of herself that there’s nothing left to fight the world outside.

Tripitaka doesn’t try to force her. She keeps her grip light, her own body loose and slack, tries to keep her presence as calming as she can. She doesn’t have much experience in dealing with this sort of thing, but she watched the monks attend the sick enough times to have some idea of what not to do. Tenderness and quiet is the way to go, she knows; it never does any good to panic someone already drowning in delirium.

When it’s over, it happens in a rush. Sandy’s eyelids flutter once, twice, and just like that she’s herself again, the light pouring back into her eyes and face. She works her jaw carefully, like it’s aching, and when she finally speaks again, though the word has not changed at all, this time she says it with clarity and recognition.

“Tripitaka...”

And she throws herself into her arms, still shaking down to her bones, and all Tripitaka can do is hold on tight and ride it out with her.

“It’s okay,” she says, feeling small and helpless. “It’s over now. I’m here and you’re—”

She stops. She can’t exactly say ‘safe’, now, can she?

Not that it matters. As always, Sandy is barely listening. She pulls back a little, squinting into Tripitaka’s face with an urgency that stuns her.

“Are you certain?” she asks, desperate and fearful. “I thought... I was so sure...”

Tripitaka flounders for a moment, then lies. “I’m certain.”

It seems to work. Taking her at her word, as she so often does, Sandy slumps back. She’s a mess, breathless and shaken, and when she drags her hands over her face they come away damp with sweat.

“I was so sure...” she says again. “So sure.”

“Everything’s fine,” Tripitaka says again, because she doesn’t know what else to say. Sandy is swallowing thickly, convulsively, like she’s choking down a sour taste or fighting the threat of sickness. “Do you want some water?”

“That would be...” She closes her eyes, breathes through her nose. “Yes, please.”

Pigsy meets her eye as she grabs a waterskin from their bags. He doesn’t say anything, but the tense, anxious look on his face makes it clear he’s spent more time watching them than standing guard. She can’t really blame him for that; had she been in his place, she’s sure she would have done the same thing too.

She wishes he would join them, though, rather than just watching from the sidelines. She feels so small and helpless; she would give anything to not have to deal with this all alone. But the look on his face confirms what she already knows deep down, in the place she’s still trying to deny: that no-one else can do this, that she is the only one Sandy will listen to. It’s not what she wants to hear, but it is what it is.

When she gets back, Sandy is sitting cross-legged with her back against a tree. She has her scythe in her lap and is running her fingertips along the blade with a wondering look on her face; she’s so preoccupied by her thoughts that she doesn’t seem to notice Tripitaka’s return.

Tripitaka watches her for a moment, taken in by the stillness in her, the silence so strange after all that shivering and whimpering. It almost seems a shame to disturb her now, but she’s still swallowing too much and her face is still very, very pale.

Sandy takes the offered waterskin with a smile, pained and strained though it is, and drinks very carefully. It’s a blessing, the silence, and for a long, beautifully simple moment, Tripitaka doesn’t have to do anything but sit quietly and hold her hand.

“I am sorry,” Sandy says when she’s finished. She keeps Tripitaka’s hand in hers, squeezing every now and then in rhythm with the pulses of pain. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me,” Tripitaka says. Her own voice is shaking now too, she realises, and rather more than Sandy’s. “You _worried_ me.”

“I didn’t mean to do that either.” She closes her eyes, leans her head back against the tree, and when she speaks again she sounds like she’s trying to convince herself far more than Tripitaka. “It was just a dream.”

“Yes,” Tripitaka says, emphatically. “Whatever it was, that’s all it was.” She squeezes her hand, feels the pulse in Sandy’s palm jump. “It wasn’t real. This is.”

Sandy stares down at their linked fingers, frowning as though she’s never seen them before.

“It’s a strange thing,” she says softly. “Pain, I mean. Makes things unclear. Confusing.” She sighs, then winces. “I used to know the difference, you know. What was real, what wasn’t. Now, trying to make sense of it makes me feel quite unwell.” She swallows again, and takes another careful sip from the skin. “Is it just the pain, do you think?”

It’s not really a question, Tripitaka can tell, but she answers just the same, as if it were. “Pain can do that,” she says. “When I was at the monastery, I saw— I mean, I _tended_ —”

She clears her throat, leaves the rest unsaid, then pulls away.

Sandy lets her go without complaint, and does not resist either when Tripitaka pries the waterskin out of her hand. It’s much lighter than it was, but that doesn’t bother her; for her purposes, it’s plenty. 

Taking care to keep herself covered in the places that matter, she tears a small scrap from her tunic, and wets it thoroughly with what was left in the skin. Sandy watches, wetting her lips with a frown.

“You won’t slake your thirst very well that way,” she says.

Tripitaka chuckles. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”

And she leans in, as slow and careful as she can, and presses the cloth to Sandy’s face. 

Sleep and pain have robbed her skin of some of its luminance; she’s sweat-slick and smeared with dirt, and the cool, damp cloth carves a clean path through the grime and the unnatural heat. Tripitaka has spent enough of her life watching the monks — the real ones — tend to the sick and injured, and she knows how to ease suffering. Even just a little, even when she knows it’s futile, she can do this much.

Sandy flinches a little at the first contact, but she recovers herself quickly and in less than a moment she’s leaning into Tripitaka’s touch. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks as her eyes slide shut, and the shaky sigh that catches in her throat is almost content for the first time in far too long.

“Oh,” she says, very softly. “Oh, I see.”

Tripitaka nods, though she knows Sandy won’t see it, and tries to keep her hands steady and strong. It’s not much, and she knows it won’t do anything against the pain or the blood or anything else, but it’s all she has, all she can do. It has to be worth something, even if it’s just the dreamy look on Sandy’s face.

It doesn’t last, though. Heat is pouring off Sandy’s skin in thick, heavy pulses, and the cloth grows warm far too quickly. It’s worrying, even though Tripitaka knew it was only a matter of time, knew that not even a god can fight off the inevitable forever. If she looks hard enough at her skin, she can almost see the magic coursing through the veins below, the dull throb of pain keeping rhythm with the flow of blood.

Tripitaka has tried very hard not to think too much about what the weapon did, what kind of magic can sustain suffering for so long, but she wonders now whether it will be blood loss or pain that kills her in the end. She watched men and women die from both at the monastery, and she knows which one she would take if the choice was hers.

“I wish I could do more,” she whispers aloud, and she’s not really sure if she’s talking about Sandy or the monks that fell, the ones that had so much more to give.

“You do,” Sandy breathes. She grasps Tripitaka’s wrist with both hands, holding her in place. There is no strength in her grip, but Tripitaka lets her pretend there is. “You really have no idea, do you? How much you do. How much you...”

She trails off. Tripitaka flexes her fingers, catches the heat on Sandy’s face, the sickly pallour of her skin, the glassy void behind her eyes.

“I’m helpless,” she says. “You’re in pain, and there’s nothing I can do to make it less.”

“Untrue.”

She turns her head to the side. Her lips brush the backs of Tripitaka’s fingers, find the droplets of water still clinging to them from the cloth. Tripitaka shivers a little, struck by the suddenness and the intimacy, but she doesn’t pull away.

“Before you,” Sandy continues, softer, “this was all I had.”

Tripitaka frowns, confused and a little dazed. “Fingers?”

“ _Water_.”

There’s laughter in her voice, though, and it’s only a little razed by pain and blood. The blush that creeps up Tripitaka’s neck feels less like shame and more like hope. It’s a refreshing thing, a precious thing, if entirely too brief.

“Oh.”

“It was the only thing that ever touched me,” Sandy goes on. Her lips shift as she speaks, brushing against Tripitaka’s skin like shared secrets. The water is gone now, but neither of them move. “For a long, long time I thought it was the only thing that ever would. Cool water, still water, moving water. It spoke to me. Still does, I suppose, but it’s quieter now.”

Tripitaka doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. Hearing voices from things that don’t speak isn’t really something she’s familiar with. “I see.”

Sandy doesn’t seem to mind her lack of comprehension. “It was the only thing that ever comforted me,” she says. “When you live in a sewer, feared and hated and hiding from the world, there’s not so very much to live for, you know?”

“I can imagine.” She can’t, really, but the lie seems to bring some comfort.

“So it was all there was. Water. The only thing in the world that made me feel alive.” And her lips catch Tripitaka’s fingers again, and there’s no water but so much life. “Until you.”

That’s too much. Flinching, Tripitaka pulls away. She stares down at her hand, at the invisible marks where Sandy’s lips found water and life, and she trembles.

“You have to stop saying things like that,” she says. “You have to.”

“But it’s true.”

“No.” Whether it is or not, she doesn’t want to hear it; she can’t hear it. “Sandy, I can’t be your reason for living. And I _won’t_ be your reason for dying.”

“I know that.”

She says it with so much sorrow, so much grief, that Tripitaka almost wants to take it all back. She doesn’t, though, because she knows how much Sandy values honesty and openness, how easily she sees through untruths, and she will not defy that even if it hurts.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She means it, yes, but maybe not as much as she should.

Sandy has already moved on, though, wandering circles in her usual meandering way, like that was never the point of the conversation at all.

“The Scholar taught me a little,” she says, out of nowhere. “How to use my powers. Did I tell you that?”

Tripitaka blinks at the change of subject — sometimes, her head hurts just trying to figure out the twists and turns of Sandy’s thoughts — then feels her heart grow heavy.

“You didn’t,” she says. Her heart pounds, aching with old, old memories. “I’d remember if you did.”

“Mm. Well. Who else was there? The gods were gone, and I was hiding, and for a long while I didn’t even know I—” She stops, shakes her head, like she accidentally let out more than she meant to. “Unimportant, of course. But yes. He taught me a great many things. Like he taught you, I suppose.”

Tripitaka thinks about that, all the things she learned from the Scholar, from the monks, from her old life. Her heart aches, ready to burst, a loss she still hasn’t truly come to terms with. “He was a good teacher,” she says, and grieves.

“He was.” Sandy looks mournful too, but it’s very a different colour on her. “He told me I should always hold on to the things that brought me comfort. Even if I found new ones. That I should never let go of the stillness of the sea and the way it made me feel at peace. That I might need it one day.”

The hammering in Tripitaka’s heart reaches a crescendo. It hurts terribly, almost physically, and the too-keen memory of the Scholar’s face is almost more than she can endure.

“Wise words,” she manages. It takes everything she has not to burst into tears. “From a wise man.”

“He said I should find my way back there,” Sandy goes on, “if I ever became lost. And I thought... I thought that was such a strange thing to say. You know? I lived in a sewer. How could I possibly become lost?” Her eyes grow wet, and she turns away, pressing a hand to her side, to the pulsing, painful wound; she doesn’t cry, but she looks like she desperately wants to. “But I feel lost now, Tripitaka. I feel terribly, terribly lost.”

Tripitaka thinks of the Scholar, of the only family she’s ever known. She thinks of the monks, too, of their lives spent fighting evil and helping the weak, of their dying breaths choked by so much pain. She thinks of the things she learned and the things she saw, the things she couldn’t control; she thinks of the helplessness she felt the day it all changed, the same helplessness she feels now. She thinks and thinks and hurts, and wishes that it would stop.

Sandy is looking down at her side, fingers clenching over the wound. Her eyes are glazed and glassy, and sweat is breaking out again across her forehead. Tripitaka can feel the pain radiating out of her, and there’s nothing she can do to make it easier. She rests her hand over Sandy’s, catches the stuttering rhythm of her breath through her clothes.

It’s hard. It is so hard and so painful and so, so _much_.

She wants to be more. She wants to be all the meanings behind her stolen name, strength and hope and promise. She wants to be _Tripitaka_ , in body and name and soul. But she’s not. She’s just a girl playing at being a monk, and the only thing she has that’s really hers is a secret she can never tell.

“I feel lost too,” she whispers.

And Sandy looks down at her, eyes bright with pain and fever and blood, and her breathing becomes so, so slow.

“Do you think I’ll live long enough?” she asks quietly. “To see the sea again? Do you think I’ll live long enough to find peace there?”

Tripitaka has no idea how to answer that. But she is tired of lying, tired of pretending, and so she tells the truth.

“I don’t know, Sandy. I really don’t know.”

*


	4. Chapter 4

*

In defiance of Pigsy’s optimism, the morning is no less hard.

Tripitaka wakes to sunlight, to Sandy’s hair tickling her face, to a tangle of loose, long limbs wrapped around her body, and to the wet, sticky heat of blood seeping through her tunic.

She jolts upright, wide awake in a heartbeat.

Sandy is still fast asleep, oblivious to the blood burning between them, and she doesn’t stir at all when Tripitaka tries to extricate herself. It took a long time, but when Tripitaka finally lulled her back to sleep she became still and at least mostly peaceful.

Pigsy was right, it seemed, about Tripitaka’s presence being enough to settle her; sadly, though she can’t say the same was true for herself. The night was already starting to dim by the time she followed Sandy into sleep, and now she’s awake she doesn’t feel like she got any rest at all.

The rude awakening hasn’t helped; the blood is hot and sticks to both of them, and Tripitaka shudders and shudders.

She rolls Sandy over as gently as she can, and tries to take a look at the wound. Her shirt is stuck to the skin, though, fused with blood and sweat, and when she tries to tug it free Sandy lets out a whimper of such bone-deep pain that it rends Tripitaka’s heart in two.

She limps her way back to consciousness with an effort, and even when she’s awake her eyes are clouded and confused.

“That _hurts_ ,” she complains, and tries to pull away.

Tripitaka freezes. She still has Sandy’s shirt clenched in her fist, the blood searing brands onto her palm, and despite Sandy’s struggling she can’t seem to remember how to let go.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, feeling just as lost as Sandy looks. “You bled through your clothes. And, um, mine. I was just trying to take a look.”

“Understandable.” She tries to slap Tripitaka’s hands away, but she’s too weak. Her hands are as fragile as parchment, like dust-dry bones buried in ashes. “But please stop.”

Tripitaka tries, she really does, but she’s paralysed.

Luckily, Pigsy is on hand to make things easier for both of them. He shoulders his way between them, prying them apart like neither of them weigh a thing, ‘tsk’ing and rolling his eyes like this is a normal occurrence, something that happens every day, barely even worth mentioning.

“Idiots,” he mutters, good-natured but weary; from the lines under his eyes, Tripitaka can guess how little he’s slept. He gives her knuckles a wry, impatient tap, and her fingers finally remember how to unclench. “You’d think a monk would know better than to put his hands on a lady without invitation.”

“I wasn’t... I’m not...” She flounders, embarrassed and a little annoyed. “She bled through her clothes. I was just—”

“Sure you were. Any excuse, eh?”

He nudges her aside, though, and grows very serious when he sees the state of Sandy’s clothes. They’re hardly neat, even on a good day, more tatters than actual fabric, but this morning they’re even worse than usual, blood-soaked and dirty and still sticking to the skin. He growls his disapproval, a rumble that masks more worry than irritation, and Sandy shoves him away with a whine.

“Not my fault,” she pouts, a little defensive. “I was asleep.”

Pigsy huffs a few choice curses under his breath. He’s still frowning at her side, but he makes no move to peel the clothes away from the wound.

“Can’t you keep this blasted thing clean?” he chides her, then heaves a tired sigh. “All right, then. Back to the river we go.”

He hauls her up to her feet, making a pretense of roughness, but Tripitaka knows it’s just for show: he could carry a fly by its wings without harming it at all. Sandy stands unsteadily, leaning on her scythe and looking quite sick, but she does not complain.

“Yes,” she says, like she’s speaking through a fog. “I like the river. Clean water. Quiet, peaceful. I’d stay there forever if you’d let me.”

“None of that,” he chides. He holds her by the arm, lets his free hand rest at the small of her back, keeping her steady under the pretext of guiding her away. “Come on, now. Off we go.” 

Tripitaka watches him move off, feeling guilty and not really knowing why. “Can I...?”

“I got this.” He glances back at her only briefly, but there is warmth in him when he does. Drained, exhausted, bone-weary, but warmth just the same. “You make a start on breakfast, eh?”

It’s probably the worst idea Tripitaka’s heard since they started travelling together. And that is really, really saying something.

“I think we’d all be happier if I didn’t,” she says. “Maybe Monkey—” But then she looks around, and his absence slams into her like a blow. “Where _is_ Monkey?”

Pigsy averts his eyes.

“Foraging,” he says. The unease in his tone is about as subtle as his body language, which is to say not at all. “Been at it since before daybreak. You’d think he was the one with his life hanging in the balance, the way he’s been—”

He stops.

Sandy lurches against him, off-balance and very upset. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, the words barely audible. “My pain. My mistake. My fault. He shouldn’t have to feel that way.”

“Stop that.” Pigsy nudges her a little with his rake, pointed but very gentle. “If you want to throw blame, throw it at the demons. Otherwise, keep quiet and keep your chin up.”

Sandy nods. She takes a couple of steps on her own, stumbling like a sleepwalker. “I’m trying very hard.”

“Yeah, I know you are.” He steps up behind her, shouldering her along and keeping her steady. “Come on, then. The quicker we get there, the quicker we get back and get some food in us.” His eyes fall on Tripitaka again, and if she didn’t know better she’d swear they darken just a little. “Get that breakfast going.”

“But I can’t—” 

It’s no use. For a god the size of a building and one with more blood on the outside than the inside, they move impossibly fast. They’re gone, out of earshot before she’s even started the sentence.

“—cook,” she finishes, to the silent, disapproving trees.

*

It’s true. She can’t cook at all.

Not for want of trying, or even for want of experience. She had to pull her weight in the monastery, of course, and she had to pull three times her weight when she was working in the tavern under Monica; none of her homes, temporary or otherwise, were the coddling kind, and Tripitaka learned early how to take care of herself.

In theory, at least. It’s just putting it into practice that’s the problem.

Just one more simple talent, she thinks, that she and Sandy both lack.

Monkey returns from his foraging some time later, to find her labouring mournfully over a blackened, inedible stew. He’s in his usual sour morning mood, but he calms a little at the sight of her, irritated but not angry.

Not yet, anyway. She can feel it crackling on the air, though, and she worries.

“Seriously?” he blurts out. “They left _you_ in charge of the food?”

Tripitaka bristles, rather more defensive than she has any right to be with a half-melted spoon in her hand.

“They were busy,” she explains with a pitiful little scowl. “Sandy’s wound needed cleaning again. Pigsy took her to the river. He thought it would be a good idea if I...”

She trails off, though, struck by the look on his face.

He’s pacing, wringing his hands and growling to himself, all but oblivious to her mumbling or the charred mess of their would-be breakfast. Tripitaka knows him well enough to recognise when an explosion is imminent, so she sits back, sets the spoon aside, and waits for it.

He stops, snarls, and spins to face her. “You know this is pointless, right?”

She sighs. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Yeah? Well, I would.”

He’s muttering, not really to her, though he clearly wants her to hear. It’s not like Sandy, who can’t seem to hold a conversation with anyone except herself; Monkey’s just trying to keep from yelling at her. In his awkward, clumsy way, it’s actually kind of thoughtful.

“Monkey…”

“No. Do not waste my time with your stupid cock-eyed optimism.” His eyes flash danger. “I have turned this forest upside-down, and there is nothing here.”

As he speaks, his voice starts to crack, not with anger but with helplessness. She knows the difference entirely too well, and it sends a crack splintering through her heart.

“Look,” she sighs,“I know it’s—”  


“ _Nothing_!”

And there it is, the explosion she knew was coming.

He throws down a small pouch overflowing with herbs, and kicks it with a savagery that startles her. She doesn’t need to look closer to know that none of them are anything new; his outburst tells her all she needs to know. 

She’s not sure what he was expecting, really, but the desperation in his eyes is all too familiar. As stubborn in this as everything else, he would sooner struggle in vain to the very last, picking out the same useless herbs a thousand times over until his strength gives out and his breath along with it, than accept that what they’re looking for might not exist.

At least, it might not exist _here_. And the world is too big and too vast and too much to even try and guess where to go next.

“I don’t think we’re achieving anything by staying here,” Tripitaka says quietly, feeling the thought out by giving it voice. “Other than making your morning mood even worse, I mean.”

“Well, then, what do you suggest we do?” The frustration is flowing freely now, spilling out of him despite his best efforts to hold it in check; it was a noble effort, but not even a god can hold back a tidal wave. “Just throw up our hands and give up? Sit around playing stupid word games and waiting for her to die?”

“I think she’d enjoy that,” Tripitaka says mildly. It’s amusing because it’s true, and tragic for the same reason. “But no.”

“Then what?” He lashes out, sends the herbs scattering with another brutal kick. “Because I’m all out of ideas.”

Tripitaka doesn’t answer.

She looks him up and down, the sweat and the rage, the fire in his eyes and the shaking in his limbs, and says, “You’re not the only one feeling helpless, Monkey.”

“I’m not _helpless_.” He spits the word like it’s the cruelest insult he can imagine, like he would sooner die himself than admit to feeling that way. Tripitaka’s heart aches for him, it truly does. “I’m _angry_. And if that wound doesn’t kill her, I might go ahead and finish the job myself after what she’s put us through.”

“You don’t mean that,” she says.

She knows he doesn’t, of course, but the fire in his eyes burns so hot that for a moment she almost doubts it. “Just try me.”

“Monkey...”

He throws up his hands, spins on his heel and reels away from her. He can deny it all he wants, but she can see the panic trembling under the frustration and the rage, and all the impotent screaming in the world won’t make it go away.

He does care. More deeply than he’ll say, perhaps more deeply than he knows. His arrogance and stubbornness are well known by now, to her more than anyone, but he is closer to human than he wants to admit, and he can no more hide his emotions than she can transform her body into a real monk’s.

“I never asked for any of this,” he says, sounding hoarse. “I was content to sleep away the rest of my life in that stupid rock. Unfair as it was, it was my punishment, and I accepted it. Why did you have to go and wake me?”

“Because the world needs you,” Tripitaka says, without hesitation. “You can’t hide from your responsibilities for all eternity. And you can’t hide from your feelings, either.”

“I can try,” he mutters, then claps a horrified hand over his mouth. “I mean, I don’t _need_ to hide from my feelings because I don’t _have_ any feelings. Shut up.”

Tripitaka stifles a smile. It’s a sad sort of thing to find solace in, but there it is. “It doesn’t make you weak,” she says. “Having feelings, admitting them. None of that makes you weak.”

“Yes, it does. And it leaves you vulnerable. It gives your enemies a weapon to use against you.” He spins again, this time to face her. The desperation in his eyes is a terrible thing, almost more so than the anger. “Do you really think she would have gotten hurt if she wasn’t distracted? Do you think any of this would have happened if she wasn’t more focused on _you_ than the demons?”

Tripitaka reels. She doesn’t need to think about it, doesn’t need to wonder; she already knows the answer. Sandy told her that at great length. _He was coming for you. I stopped him, and then he stopped me._

“That’s not...” But her voice breaks, and she doesn’t have the strength to finish.

Eyes narrowed, Monkey presses on. “Oh, don’t blame yourself,” he says, a little hastily, like he thinks she can just switch it off on a whim. “You didn’t ask her to care about you. Didn’t ask her to kiss your boots or worship the ground you walk on. It’s not on you. If she dies from this, it’s all on her.”

“For _caring_?” It hurts just to think of it, much less say it.

“Yes!”

Tripitaka shakes her head. The rest of her is shaking too, with anger and grief and countless other emotions, too many to name or even try to define. She won’t bend her thoughts the way he does, won’t convince herself that feeling nothing is better, even when the weight of feeling too much threatens to consume her. It has to be better, feeling too much, than turning away and turning it all off. It has to be better than emptiness.

“You’re wrong,” she tells him. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Fine,” he shrugs. “Believe that if you want. But when she dies and you’re useless with mourning, know that I’ll be the one staying focused to make sure you don’t share her fate.”

In a twisted sort of way, it’s touching. It is caring, in the only form he can process it: _I will keep you safe, I will protect you when you can’t protect yourself_. He may think he’s being calloused and cold, but it’s the opposite, and perhaps if she were in a more generous mood, Tripitaka would smile and call him on it. _See, it’s not so hard, is it?_

With the mood she’s currently in, though, she only hears a tiny part of what he’s said, and it’s not that part.

“You’ve given up, then?” she says, in a whisper.

Monkey blinks, perplexed. “What’s that, now?”

“You said ‘when she dies’. _When_. Like you think it’s inevitable. Like you’re already planning her funeral.”

He sighs. “That’s not what I meant.”

Maybe not, but it certainly sounded that way.

Tripitaka wishes it didn’t sting as badly as it does, the defeat in his words, if not his voice. He’s just being himself, she knows, denial and self-preservation overpowering compassion the way it always does, the stubborn, arrogant presumption that he will be safer if he doesn’t feel. They’ve not known each other for very long, but she knows that much about him as surely as she knows his name.

She hates that it bothers her, hates that she’s allowing it to bother her, hates that she can’t just see it for what it is and move on. She should be better by now at dealing with him on his level, but she’s not, and she hates herself for being exactly what he’s always said she is.

Maybe she, like Sandy, feels too much. Maybe they really are weak, after all.

“Maybe you’re right,” she says out loud, and it’s hard and cold, and maybe she wants to hurt him a little bit too. “Maybe it _is_ inevitable. Maybe we should just give up and accept it.”

“I never said that.” He’s angry again now, at her. “I never—”

“But you’re thinking it, aren’t you? Whether you’ll say so or not.” She doesn’t look at him, refuses to let him see the tears stinging her eyes, refuses to let him see how _weak_ she is, how weak he’s made her. “You just want to get it over with so you can bury your feelings along with her.”

“No!” The word bursts out of him like a roar, like a scream. “No, that’s _not_ what I want! Why do you think I spent the whole morning scouring this useless, worthless waste of a forest?”

She still won’t look at him, but she can hear the agony in him now, the same tears strangling his throat that clog her vision. She stays where she is, unmoving, eyes locked on the horizon, giving him the dignity of not being seen, if nothing else.

“I don’t know,” she says, deathly quiet, a whisper he’ll need to strain to hear. “Why don’t you tell me why?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long, long time. Not that it really matters; she knows the answer perfectly well. She’s known it for a while, despite his best efforts to hide it; she just wants to hear him admit it. She wants to drive the words and the truth out of him, make it so he can’t deny them any more, so he can’t pretend they’re not a part of him, as real and inescapable as his talent or his temper.

She waits. Watches him pacing, wringing his hands, watches him kick at the discarded herb pouch again and again and again.

“You know why,” he says at last, and he is tortured and upset, full not with rage or violence or hatred but with pain and grief and sorrow. “Because she’s my _friend_. And I don’t want to watch her die.”

Saying it, admitting it, seems to drain the strength right out of him. He falls to his knees, tears up a fistful of herbs from the discarded pouch, and rips them all to shreds. Tripitaka watches, wordless and respectful and pretending she’s still looking at the horizon. He deserves a moment for this. He deserves much, much more than that.

When it’s over, when he’s stoic and himself again, she crosses back to his side. She crouches beside him, though her height means it’s unnecessary, and rests a hand on his arm.

“Good,” she says.

He takes a deep breath, one that sounds suspiciously like a sniffle. “I don’t want...”

It’s all he has left, but it’s enough.

Tripitaka leans in close, rests her head on his shoulder, and says, “So let’s make sure you don’t have to.”

He looks down at her, eyes dark and damp and full of despair. For the first time since she met him, he’s not trying to hide his helplessness, not trying to pretend the anger ever came from anywhere else. She is so, so proud of him.

“How?” he whispers, hollow and broken and tragic. “I’ve turned this place upside-down. There’s nothing here.”

Tripitaka looks to the horizon again, to the edge of the forest and beyond, to the place where the trees all disappear and there’s nothing but earth and sky and—

_Sea._

She thinks of last night, of water and salt and the look on Sandy’s face when she talked about it, the way the pain seemed to lessen, the way her noisy head seemed to grow quiet and still, if just for a moment.

She thinks, with grief in her heart, _if nothing else, I can give her that_.

And she looks at Monkey and feels her spine and her will turn to steel.

“Well, then,” she says. “We’ll find somewhere else.”

*

By the time Pigsy and Sandy get back from the river, she’s sure.

Pigsy’s face is worn with worry. He hides it well, covers it over with his usual easy smile, but it’s cracked and shot through with strain; Tripitaka can make out the lines on his face more easily now the sun’s fully up, and they are deep and drained. Small wonder, she supposes, when he’s been the backbone of the group for so long.

Sandy is deathly pale, but she’s still walking by herself. Pigsy allows it, following behind her without comment, but he stays close, ready to catch her when she stumbles. Which she does, more and more with every step. She tries, though, and he allows it, and the two of them together radiate such strength and affection that Tripitaka feels her heart swell.

Limping into camp, Sandy takes one look at the smouldering remains of Tripitaka’s would-be breakfast, and says, “If I eat that, I fear I will be violently sick.”

Pigsy is no less ungenerous. “You and me both,” he chuckles, then glowers at Tripitaka. “Seriously? How hard is it?”

Tripitaka scowls, and crosses her arms. “We all have our talents.”

“Still trying to figure yours out,” he shoots back. He helps Sandy to settle down by the fire, then takes up the half-melted spoon with a weary sigh. “Sit back, all of you, and let the master work.”

For all her wounded pride, Tripitaka does not protest. She knows her own shortcomings. Besides, she’s hungry.

She eats quietly, once the food is prepared, with one eye on her bowl and the other on her friends. As desperate as her body is for sustenance, she barely even tastes the fruits of Pigsy’s labour. That’s unfair, she knows; he’s by far the best cook among them — the only one, really, with any measure of talent — but it’s a wholly thankless job. He seems resigned to the fact that he’s the only one who will ever appreciate the work he puts into it, though she suspects he wishes that wasn’t the case.

Monkey eats ravenously, with his hands like his namesake, but he treats it more like a duty than anything to be relished. He eats because he needs his strength, because without it he’ll be weaker, and that’s as far as he thinks on the subject. Like a soldier or a farmer, he doesn’t know or care what kind of meal is put in front of him, so long as it’s edible.

Sandy doesn’t fare any better with Pigsy’s offerings than she would have done with Tripitaka’s. She stares mournfully into her bowl for about five seconds, then pushes it away with a low, miserable groan.

“I’m sorry, Pigsy,” she says. “My stomach is very unhappy today.”

And she lies down, closes her eyes, and falls silent.

Pigsy doesn’t try to encourage her like he did last night, gently or otherwise. Tripitaka wonders if he can tell it would be pointless this time, or if he’s just too exhausted to try. He’s got more endurance than the rest of them put together — at least, when they’re not running — but even he has his limits, and she suspects they’ve been stretched past their breaking point for a long time now.

“Righto,” he says, with false cheer. “More for me.”

But he doesn’t eat nearly as much as usual either.

*

Tripitaka waits until the meal is over before broaching their next move.

She’s the one left to clean up — appropriate, she has to admit, given that most of the mess was hers in the first place — and for once she’s thankful for the task. It gives her an excuse to keep her head down and her eyes hidden, to avoid the anger on Monkey’s face and the pain on Sandy’s, to not let them see the strain in her either. Her thoughts are troubled, and her heart hurts when she speaks, and she does not want them to know how much.

“I think we should follow the river,” she blurts out, and hopes that it sounds casual, like something she only just thought of.

Monkey grunts his indifference. “Beats sticking around here,” he mutters, like that’s all the thought it needs. “I’m getting tired of these stupid trees.”

Pigsy is a touch more discerning. “Any particular reason?” he asks, with careful curiosity. “You got a destination in mind, or just feel like a change of scenery?” He looks around with a sigh. “Not that I’d complain about the latter, mind.”

“The sea,” Sandy mumbles. She’s sitting up a bit now, clutching her scythe like a security blanket, and she studies it with blind eyes as she speaks. “He wants to take me to the sea. He thinks I’m going to die, and he wants me to be at peace.”

She says it so simply, so quietly, like it’s the only thing that makes sense to her, the only truth she can imagine. And she’s not entirely wrong: it’s closer than Tripitaka is comfortable with, close enough that shame colours her face, that she is suddenly painfully aware of everyone looking at her.

“I never said that.” She scrubs the pot a little more fiercely, hoping it will make the flush on her face look like exertion. “I just think it’s as good a place as any to continue searching.”

“Mm.” Sandy’s smile is dreamy, drifting, but she speaks with the surety of someone who knows. “Coincidental, yes? After we discussed it last night?”

Monkey pricks his ears up at that. “You made plans without me?”

“We didn’t...” Tripitaka sighs, then throws up her hands; this is not how she imagined this conversation going, though given the company perhaps it should have been. “It wasn’t a _plan_. It wasn’t even a discussion, really. It was just—” She stops, haunted by the look on Sandy’s face. “Anyway, it’s not the point. I just thought it would be a good direction to go. That’s all. I mean, you can’t get lost following a river.”

“Yeah, you can,” Pigsy says dryly. “Trust me on this one.”

Tripitaka risks a glance at at Sandy. Blessedly, she’s looking down at her scythe again.

“Not with her around.” The words come out much more affectionately than she intended; that’s probably not a bad thing, though it makes the flush burn hotter. “She’s like our own personal divining rod.”

“I suppose she’s good for that, at least,” Monkey mutters, then instantly looks regretful. “I mean, as well. As other things. Like... uh...” He flounders. “Help me out here, monk?”

Tripitaka smiles. It says a lot that he’s actually trying to be sweet, even if he isn’t particularly good at it.

“Too many to name,” she says smoothly, sparing them both the effort of actually trying to. Not that it really matters; as usual, Sandy is barely even aware of their presence.

“I’d like that,” she’s saying, almost entirely to herself. “I’d like very much to see the sea before I die.” She looks up like she’s coming out of a dream, only slowly realising that she’s not alone, and her eyes grow just a little clearer as they find Tripitaka’s. “Would you swim with me, Tripitaka?”

Tripitaka opens her mouth, affirmation already finding its way to her tongue, then catches herself and shakes her head.

“I can’t.” The regret clenches her jaw, makes the guilt sound like anger. “You know that. Monks aren’t allowed to... I mean, that is...” She closes her eyes, hating herself and this facade; it’s hard enough to deny Sandy anything, even on a good day, but when she’s looking at her like she’s so resigned to dying, like Tripitaka is her last wish, it’s agony. “I’m sorry, Sandy, but no. I can’t swim with you.”

“Oh.”

She says it quietly, with resignation, but her lower lip is quivering and she looks just about ready to burst into tears. Tripitaka wants to take her by the arms, by the shoulders, wants to pull her in and tell her everything, but she _can’t_. Sandy’s pain is a terrible, tragic thing, but it’s insignificant next to the pain she would unleash by letting that secret out.

So she swallows down the truth, the regret, the hurt, and she tells herself that this is for the best, and she goes back to scrubbing pots like the fate of the world depends on it.

If only it did.

“Harsh,” Pigsy murmurs, but he doesn’t press the issue; no doubt he thinks it’s none of his business. “Well, it’s fine by me. Anything has to be more productive than sticking around here.” He glances at Sandy, just for a moment, and his expression darkens. “Maybe a bit of that fresh sea air will put some colour back into your cheeks. You reckon?”

“Doubtful,” Sandy says. She looks up at him, sees the grief in his eyes, and musters a smile. “But maybe.”

“Maybe.” He chuckles, though it’s obvious he doesn’t believe it either. “Good enough.”

Tripitaka watches them, feeling distanced and disconnected. She watches the smile flicker on Sandy’s face, strain and pain overpowering the warmth far too quickly. It fades like a dream, like it was never really there, and Pigsy’s fades with it; he doesn’t say anything more, but Tripitaka can see the shadows gathering behind his eyes and she knows he’s thinking the same thing she is. Neither of them would ever be cruel enough to say it aloud, but Sandy’s pain speaks for itself.

They’re not getting any closer to a cure, and Sandy is faltering more and more with each breath. At least the sea — a peaceful end, if that’s what it comes down to, for someone who breathes water — is something they can find.

“Good enough,” Tripitaka echoes, a sad, broken whisper to herself.

And it’s not. It’s really, really not. But it’s the only thing they have.

*

They set out slowly, and only get slower.

Sandy is still trying to walk under her own power, but it’s beyond futile by now. Even using her scythe as a crutch, she’s still too weak to hold herself upright for very long, and the exertion is torturous to behold. Tripitaka watches with an ache in her chest, waiting for one of the others to say something, but they don’t. Even Monkey seems unwilling to break her heart by pointing out the obvious.

Blessedly, it’s taken out of their hands before too long. They’ve been walking for maybe half an hour, so very slowly, when she stumbles, hits the ground and doesn’t get back up.

They’re all by her side in an instant. She’s hunched forwards, bracing on her hands with her hair hiding her face, but Tripitaka doesn’t need to see to know that she’s in terrible pain; the rasping rattle of her breath and the desperate heaving of her chest tell her all she needs to know. Again she remembers watching the monks in the monastery, the sick and injured they took into their care, the ones who died slowly and painfully, and she chokes back tears.

“Can you move?” Monkey is saying. His voice is still hard, but not nearly as much as it has been; it’s urgency driving him now, much more than anger. “Can you get up?”

Tripitaka nudges him aside, gentle but with intent. “Sandy?”

Sandy lifts her head. Her lips move, parched and incoherent. Soundless, they shape Tripitaka’s name — not _her_ name, _his_ — and then she slumps miserably into her arms.

Tripitaka holds her close, strokes her hair and her back, tries to offer what little comfort she can. It’s not enough; it will never be enough, but she has to do something.

“It’s all right,” she whispers. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t lie to her,” Monkey says, voice tight. “It’s not okay.”

“ _Monkey_.”

But he’s not wrong.

Sandy’s face is slick with sweat, but her lips are desert-dry and her eyes are cloudy and half-blind. She’s shivering in Tripitaka’s arms, and the strain of every breath sends little tremors through them both. She doesn’t look at the other gods, can barely see as far as Tripitaka’s face, and perhaps not even that far, but she finds the smallest sliver of coherence when their eyes meet, when Tripitaka touches her burning cheek.

“He’s right about me.” The words are a moan, low and shot through with suffering. “I’m not strong enough.”

“He’s not right about anything,” Triptaka says. “He’s Monkey. The day he’s right will be the day the world stops.”

Monkey pouts his indignation. “I’m right _sometimes_ ,” he says. But then his gaze catches Sandy’s pain-soaked face, and he softens just a little. “But I wasn’t right about you.”

“I’ll do better,” she murmurs, like she barely heard him. “I can do better.”

“You’re doing just fine,” he says, and for perhaps the first time he’s pouring his frustrations into something productive, something so powerful and so kind that Tripitaka’s heart stalls to see it. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have survived nearly as well as you have. You are much, much stronger than I thought you were.”

Sandy blinks up at Tripitaka. “Did you tell him to say that?”

“Trust me,” Tripitaka says, “I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Monkey shakes his head at them both, then turns away completely. Tripitaka can’t tell which of the two of them he’s having more trouble facing, the one who’s making him feel this way or the one who encouraged him to embrace it. She can see the tension cording his shoulders and neck, though, and she knows that this is difficult for him in more than just admitting he was wrong.

“I don’t know if I could’ve done it,” he confesses, soft and sober. “Endured it as well as you have. Survived as long.” His fists clench at his sides, and for a moment he seems lost in a memory. “I know pain. I know what it does to the body, and I know what it does to the mind.”

Pigsy musters a tragic little laugh. “Well, she’s got you beaten there,” he says, with fondness and grief. “She’s got less of one to lose.”

Sandy laughs as well, a hollow, ragged sort of sound, the kind of laugh that says she doesn’t really know what’s so funny. Monkey doesn’t laugh at all, and he still doesn’t look at them.

“I thought your feelings made you weak,” he says to Sandy. “Your blind devotion to that little monk got you hurt in the first place. You were reckless and stupid when you should have been strong and focused, and I thought...”

“I was focused,” Sandy says. “I was focused on Tripitaka.”

She says it like that’s the only thing she can comprehend, the only thing in her world that makes sense, the only thing that has any value at all. Monkey turns back, studies her long and hard, and for just a moment there is something in his eyes that says he understands.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Because I was wrong. All that stupid devotion might have been the reason you got hurt, but ever since it happened it’s been the thing that’s kept you alive. It’s given you the will to endure, to survive. It...” His voice cracks. “It’s made you _strong_.”

Sandy looks at him, then looks to Tripitaka. “I feel a lot,” she says softly.

“Yeah.” He sighs, like a sort of surrender, like he’s cutting loose something more than his assumptions and his delusions of what strength means. He looks at Tripitaka, and then back at Sandy, and his whole body grows slack. “I know exactly what you feel.”

Tripitaka feels a blush climb her neck. “Uh, I don’t think—”

Monkey holds up a hand. “Silence, monk. We’re having a moment.”

“Is that what this is?” Sandy wonders aloud. “A ‘moment’?”

Monkey sighs, but it’s lighter now, and warm with all the affection he’s been denying himself for so long. Tripitaka still isn’t comfortable being the topic of conversation, but she’ll let it happen if it helps him to grow, if it helps them to grow together.

He’s looking at Sandy now with a new kind of respect, and there’s something she’s never seen in him before when he leans over her and holds out a hand.

“Since you’re down there anyway,” he says, “you might as well let me carry you.”

Sandy tries to shake her head. The dizziness blanches her skin, and she has to swallow a few times before she can speak.

“I can stand,” she insists, though no-one believes that any more. “I just need a moment. I just need...”

“Don’t be stupid.” Tripitaka watches the impatience rise up in him again, watches him embrace it, visibly grateful for something more familiar. “You’re slowing us down. Do you really want to die before we get where we’re going?”

She thinks about that for just a few seconds more than she should. “No.”

“Good.” He flexes his muscles, for show more than anything else. The anger may have faded, but the arrogance is as keen as ever; for once, Tripitaka embraces it. “Then shut up, keep still, and let me be chivalrous for once.”

So she does. She moans a little when he scoops her up into his arms — gentleness has never been his forte, and that’s not likely to change — but otherwise doesn’t make a sound. It’s not the neatest fit, her long lanky limbs tangled around him, but he makes it work, and though he grimaces a little with the exertion he is able to move comfortably enough, unhindered by her weight.

Watching as he carries her off into the brush, Pigsy quirks a brow.

“Heck of a change of heart,” he muses aloud, then looks at Tripitaka. “That your doing?”

Tripitaka shrugs. “I have no idea,” she says, with sincerity. “But whatever it is, I’m glad he got there. It’s been a long time coming.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

And that’s that, as far as he’s concerned. He flashes a grin, flips his rake over his shoulder, and takes off after them.

Tripitaka stands there for a few moments, alone, gathering her thoughts and trying to catch her breath. It warms her to see it, the slow-blossoming growth and friendship, the honesty and affection burning in these three clumsy idiots she already loves so much. It warms her, yes, but she can’t — _won’t_ — lose sight of the grief that caused it.

She can’t forget the pain in Sandy’s eyes, the heaviness of her limbs, the blood staining both their clothes, no more than she can forget the monastery, the monks and their good deeds, so many beautiful things she never appreciated until it was too late. Death and pain follow her around like a stormcloud, it seems, no matter where she goes or what she does, and all the warmth and love in the world won’t chase away that terrible chill.

She breathes slowly, steadily, takes a little time that’s all her own, to remember and mourn and feel too much. Unjudged by Monkey, unworshipped by Sandy, unseen by Pigsy. Just her and her aching heartbeat.

Then she straightens her spine, picks up Sandy’s scythe, and scrambles to catch up with her friends.

*

Monkey sets a punishing pace. For himself most of all.

He’s not angry any more, just determined. Tripitaka can feel the focus pouring off him, all of those not-so-well-buried emotions thrown behind each step, the effort of keeping his footing with a fading god in his arms. Skinny as she is, Sandy’s body can’t weigh much of anything, but Tripitaka knows that the pain does. She’s spent enough time holding her through it to know that her suffering is a powerful, physical thing.

Tripitaka jogs along behind, struggling to keep up; she’s better at it than Pigsy — who is often out of breath even when he’s sitting still — but even she has a hard time matching Monkey’s frenetic pace.

They stop twice, both against Monkey’s will.

The first time is not exactly a rest-stop, so much as an enforced pause when Pigsy falls so far behind that they can’t even hear him panting any more. Monkey is predictably irritable about it, and stubbornly refuses to sit down or catch his breath, like he thinks he can will Pigsy to catch up faster through the power of his impatience. He paces in sullen circles, bouncing on the balls of his feet, until Sandy moans and whines at him to stop.

The second time, it’s definitely a rest-stop. Pigsy takes command, with an authority he almost never uses. He eases Sandy out of Monkey’s arms, sets her gently down on the ground and pats her on the head, then crosses his arms and orders Monkey to sit.

“It won’t kill you to take it easy for five seconds,” he says, good-natured but firm. “And anyway, I bet she could use a break from getting knocked around.”

“Yes, please,” Sandy says, looking slightly green. “You have many talents, Monkey, but a smooth ride is not one of them.”

He glowers. “That’s not my fault. If you’d stop fidgeting—”

“Yes, well, if you’d stop jostling—”

“And if you’d stop complaining—”

“If you’d _both_ stop,” Pigsy interjects, “that’d be just lovely.”

They do. But the silence is so much worse.

Monkey does not take it easy, nor does he sit down. No surprises there; Tripitaka doubts anyone really expected him to. He paces restlessly for about thirty seconds, then throws up his hands and stalks off into the brush, muttering something about foraging for more herbs.

Tripitaka watches him go, disappointment hanging heavy, but doesn’t try to talk him out of it. She sighs, shaking her head, then summons a small, struggling smile when Pigsy’s big hand drops down onto her shoulder.

“Can’t teach a pig to play the piano,” he says, like that makes any kind of sense. “Or a monkey to stop moving.”

Tripitaka sighs again. “He’ll wear himself out.”

“Probably, yeah.” He sounds so careless, like he can’t see any problem with this at all. “But look on the bright side: when it happens, he’ll _have_ to take a break.”

“Yeah.” It’s not exactly comforting. “I just hope it’s not before...”

She stops, glancing at Sandy, and feels a kick in her chest.

It’s not good. She’s curled up on her side, face twisting in agony, gripping the wound with both hands like she’s trying to hold it together. Tripitaka doesn’t need to ask to know that the pain is getting worse again, and she doesn’t need to see the spreading blue-black stain on her shirt to know that the blood is coming faster now too. The helplessness threatens to take her in again, memories of the past and fears for the future clamouring for space in her head, and she turns away, gulping down deep breaths.

Pigsy’s hand tightens on her shoulder. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear she hears his breath stutter too.

“Should probably try and get it cleaned again,” he says, with uncharacteristic heaviness. “Since we’re stopped anyway, I mean. Probably won’t get another chance any time soon, if Monkey has anything to say about it.” Looking up at him, Tripitaka finds his jaw tight, his eyes strangely dark. “Don’t suppose you feel like doing the honours this time?”

It’s about the last thing Tripitaka feels like doing, honestly, but he looks so drawn and so tired that she can’t bring herself to say so. He hasn’t actually said that he can’t face the task, but he doesn’t have to: he’s always been the least subtle among them, and right now it’s written all over his face. He’s been so giving of himself all through this; how can she deny him now?

So, even though she really, really doesn’t want to, she nods, takes a deep breath and goes to crouch at Sandy’s side.

“Hey.”

“Tripitaka.” The name is a groan, bitten off through clenched teeth. “It hurts.”

So do the words. The sound of her voice, the sight of her face... every part of her fills Tripitaka with pain. She swallows hard, fighting to keep from closing her eyes, from turning away, from leaping back up to her feet and fleeing as fast and as far as they can carry her.

“Do you think you can stand?” she asks, voice thick with nausea. “Pigsy thinks we should clean it again. You know, while we’re stopped.”

Sandy shakes her head. Her eyes are squeezed shut, her breathing shallow and strangled. Tripitaka touches her face, the barest brush with the back of her hand, and finds it burning hot.

“Won’t do any good,” Sandy says. Her face contorts again, like a spasm. Tripitaka counts the pulses of pain by the fluttering of her eyelashes, the gritting of her teeth. “I don’t care if it’s clean any more, Tripitaka. I just want it to not _hurt_.”

“I know.” She strokes her cheek, the same meagre comfort the monks used to offer the ones who didn’t stand a chance, the ones already dead in everything but name. “We all want that.”

Sandy catches her by the wrist, holds her in place like she did last night.

“Sit with me.” Her voice is as weak as her grip, parchment-thin and so, so small. “Just for a little while.” She opens her eyes, blinks dizzily up at Tripitaka’s face, and the clouds behind her eyes slowly clear. “I know you think you’re not enough. But you are.”

Tripitaka takes a couple of deep breaths. “You don’t know the first thing about me,” she says. “All you know is my name and what the Scholar taught you. You don’t know who I am or what I am. You don’t know _anything_.”

It’s the closest she’s come to a real confession, but it’s still not enough. Not even close, and of course Sandy doesn’t react at all.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” she whispers. “I know that when you’re here, the pain is less. I know that when you’re here, I can almost breathe. I know that when you’re here, I feel like I’m... like maybe I will survive after all.” She sits up a little, exertion pricking her face with sweat. “That might not be enough for you, Tripitaka, but it is enough for me.”

Tripitaka doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s not sure there’s anything she can say.

She looks down at her hand, her thumb brushing Sandy’s cheek in rhythm with her broken breath, the invisible prints left behind on burning, sweat-stung skin. She wonders if Sandy will still feel the echo of her touch even when she’s not there to hold her. She wonders if she’ll want to, when she learns the truth.

She opens her mouth once, twice, then closes it again, feeling cold and deceitful and so very unworthy. Her secret has sharp teeth, gnawing at her heart, at her lungs, twisting her stomach into knots until she can’t bear it any more.

“Sandy,” she says, with urgency. Sandy blinks a few times until her eyes focus, and Tripitaka’s heart stutters. “Sandy, I’m not—”

And of course that’s the moment Monkey chooses to come bursting out of the brush, staff at the ready and face grim.

“ _Demons_ ,” he growls.

And as she leaps to her feet with clenched, shaking fists, Tripitaka doesn’t know whether to be angry, frightened, or relieved.

*


	5. Chapter 5

*

There’s three of them.

Three demons against two healthy gods, one wounded one, and a fake monk. They’re not the worst odds in the world, for sure, but that doesn’t stop the panic flooding Tripitaka’s veins, an ice-cold shower she could really do without.

Monkey is all business, of course. He’s been itching for a fight ever since this began — before then, even — and now that he’s finally got one he’s a blur of motion, desperate to make up for his previous mistakes.

His staff and his body move as one, almost too fast to see, and he doesn’t even glance back as he barks out orders, telling her to stay with Sandy, to protect her with whatever martial arts she learned during her monk’s training.

Which would be a perfectly reasonable plan of action, Tripitaka supposes, if she really were a monk or if she knew anything about how to defend herself, much less someone even weaker.

Sometimes, she almost wishes the Scholar hadn’t taken such good care of her. If she’d had a reason to learn these skills, maybe she wouldn’t be so useless now. Maybe—

“Tripitaka.” Sandy struggles upright, gripping her scythe. “I may not be much help. But I will do my best.”

“Lie back down,” Tripitaka tells her. “You need to stay out of the way.”

Sandy does not lie back down, but she doesn’t try to leap into the fray either. No doubt she’s incapable, for all her brave words; it seems to have taken everything she had in her just to sit up and hold the weapon. She’s clinging to it like a lifeline, like a kind of promise, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s more a symbol than anything else. Sandy knows that she doesn’t stand a chance; she just doesn’t want to lie there and take it.

That’s fine. Tripitaka understands that, and she won’t stand in her way. As long as she stays out of trouble and doesn’t try anything rash, let her indulge what small comforts she can find.

The demons are slithering, serpentine creatures, the same twisted breed who did this to them. Tripitaka wonders what they want this time; are they here to avenge their murdered brethren, or are they just following the scent of a dying god’s blood? If what Monkey and Pigsy said of them is even half-true—

Tripitaka grits her teeth and inches back a little, closer to Sandy. She may not have the talent to protect her, but she’ll be struck down herself before she abandons her to more of this pain.

Monkey is handling two of them at once, while Pigsy fends off the third. They fight back-to-back, always aware of each other even though they never lock eyes. It’s mesmerising to watch them: Pigsy with his raw physical power, using his body as a weapon just as effectively as his rake, and Monkey with his speed and agility, moving like the ground is on fire, never slowing, never stopping.

On the surface, they’re as fluid as ever, a well-oiled machine that never stops running. Underneath, though, Tripitaka can see something not quite right in the way Monkey moves.

She is no expert in combat situations, but they’ve run into enough trouble since they started travelling together that she flatters herself she knows his fighting style. She’s watched him, studied him; some days, she even entertains idealistic fantasies of learning from him — learning to fight not like a monk but like a god — and she knows what he’s capable of almost as well as he does.

He’s impossibly fast, unyielding just like he always is, but there’s something tentative in his form now, something she’s never seen in him before. He dances around the demons like the air is parting for him, but he’s retreating nearly as often as he attacks. Even when the demons are defending, when even she can see he has them on the ropes, still he darts back, ever cautious, always keeping out of reach, ducking and diving where he would normally be pressing his advantage.

If she didn’t know any better, she’d almost think he was—

“Don’t let them touch you!”

 _Oh_. He _is_. 

He’s _scared_. And that is something she’s never seen in him before.

Until now, she would have placed her bets on him going toe-to-toe against a whole army of demons without batting an eyelid, one against a hundred without ever stopping to think of his own safety, just to prove that he can stand up against anything. She knows better than to think that any god is truly indestructible — even before this, she’d seen the three of them in too many compromising positions to ever believe that — but Monkey never seemed to realise it himself. Five hundred years in a rock might have something to do with that, but from what she’s learned about him, it’s just the way he is: untouchable, if only in his own mind.

She never thought she’d see the day where he would back away from anything, least of all a fight.

She cuts a glance at Pigsy, finds him fending off his demon with little trouble. They’re quick, the demons, but nowhere near as powerful as the last group they fought. They’ll be outmatched in a matter of minutes, Tripitaka can tell, even with their superior numbers. 

“We’ve got this,” Pigsy says to Monkey; he’s grunting with exertion, but not out of breath. Not yet, anyway. “Don’t get your staff in a knot.”

“That’s not a thing,” Monkey shoots back, then yelps and dances back a few steps when one of them swings a curved axe-like weapon at his head. It misses him by a good three or four hands, but Tripitaka can see that he’s shaken; she’s never seen that in him either. “Less talking, more killing! I want them all dead before they—”

“No!”

It’s not her place to intervene, she knows, but this is too important to hold her tongue. She can feel an opportunity hanging on the air, and she can see Monkey aiming his staff right at it. _Not again_ , she thinks; the hands of fate have given him a second chance, and she won’t let his panic drive him to make the same mistake again.

Of course, he doesn’t even glance her way. “Not now, monk! I’m busy!”

“No!” But she won’t be silenced. She wasn’t there to stop him last time, but she will stop him now, no matter the consequences. “Monkey, they’re the _same_ demons—”

“All the more reason to kill them, before they shed even more of our blood.”

He’s deadly serious. And afraid. And that is a dangerous combination. He’ll tear every demon to shreds before he stops and thinks that maybe he’s been given a chance to make up for his past mistake.  


Tripitaka can’t let that happen. She _won’t_.

She dives forward, throws herself between his staff and the demon. She’s unarmed, useless in a fight, but she small and incredibly fast; she has that going for her, if nothing else.

Sandy lets out a strangled wail as she leaves her side, and Monkey roars as she barrels past him, but the demon — the only one she can afford to think about right now — is so focused on parrying his staff that it doesn’t notice her at all. Not until it’s too late, not until she’s hurled herself at its knees and tackled it to the ground.

It lies under her, stunned into paralysis, and for a second or two she feels almost the same way.

“Idiot!” Monkey yells, but he doesn’t hesitate in disarming the thing and kicking its weapon away. It spins, falling a short way beyond anyone’s reach. “You could have got yourself killed! Or worse.”

He doesn’t need to say what’s worse than getting killed. They’ve all watched it happen, slowly and painfully, over the last two days.

Tripitaka opens her mouth to respond, but he doesn’t give her the chance. He spins on his heels, quick as lightning, to block a blow from the other demon, then charges at it like he’s possessed. No time for thinking in the middle of a fight; for once, she’s grateful for that.

The hatred in Monkey’s eyes is blinding, his muscles bunching like his whole body is set to explode. That one will be dead in seconds, she knows, and this time she doesn’t try to stop him. Much as she hates what he’s becoming, they only need one, and as long as he’s distracted he’s not killing it.

The demon under her is starting to regain a little of its equilibrium. It struggles underneath her, trying to buck her off, and she feels her balance shift. She drives it back down, uses her whole body, but as its strength comes back her smallness stops being useful.

She wobbles, unsteady as it shifts beneath her, and struggles to hold her advantage. Little chance of that, though; she’s smaller and weaker, and the element of surprised is all used up. As soon as it finds the rest of its balance, she won’t stand a chance.

Blessedly, she doesn’t have to.

The demon is about half a breath away from getting its hands to her neck when it’s stopped in its tracks, pinned by the keen edge of Sandy’s scythe.

She’s swaying on her feet, visibly dizzy, but her grip is stone-solid on her weapon, and though her eyes are cloudy with pain and fever, her voice carries power when she says, “I wouldn’t try to move if I were you. This is really rather sharp.”

“Sandy.” Tripitaka scrambles off the demon, grateful and horrified at the same time. “Sandy, you need to lie down—”

“No.” She’s staring down at the demon, blind to everything else, perhaps even her own pain. “I want to look into the eyes of my murderers.”

“Don’t say that,” Tripitaka whispers. “You’re not dead, and you’re not going to die. We’re going to get answers out of him.”

The demon laughs, and its cruel reptilian grin sends shivers up her spine.

“Easier to squeeze blood from a stone,” it says, then eyes Sandy’s side with a hungry look. “Or perhaps from a god, eh?”

Sandy growls, low and dangerous and so unlike her that Tripitaka flinches. The edge of her scythe digs in deeper, wrings a trickle of blood from the demon’s neck.

“You’ll talk to us, or you’ll die.” She smiles too. Hers is not really cruel, but it chills Tripitaka just as well. “We can die together, yes? Won’t that be fun?”

“Sandy, don’t—”

“Tripitaka.” Her eyes grow wet. She blinks a few times. “I care for you very deeply. Very, very deeply. But this not your moment.”

Behind them, there is a shriek and a hiss as Monkey’s staff ends the second demon. Pigsy is still struggling with the third, but with Monkey free to help she knows it’s only a matter of time before that one joins its brethren.

Looking up at Sandy, swaying and hurting and so determined, she can’t say their deaths are undeserved. Even if she were a monk, a real one taught to forgive and show compassion, she would have a hard time wanting them kept alive. She does not indulge in hatred or violence, and she could never kill with such reckless abandon as Monkey and the others do, but this is one species of demon she’d happily see wiped out of existence. To hunt for sport, to relish pain and suffering, to _choose_ to kill this way...

She shudders, then reaches up to touch the backs of Sandy’s fingers. Her hands are trembling where she grips the scythe, but the blade does not waver at all.

“We’ll make him talk,” Tripitaka says gently. “Together.”

“No.” She blinks rapidly. Her legs tremble. “My pain. My—”

“Your pain is all of our pain.” It’s true. The ache in her heart threatens to tear her in two. “Sandy, you don’t have to prove anything. And you don’t have to do this alone.”

“He’s right.”

And there’s Monkey, a little out of breath but otherwise unscathed, shining like the sun sees only him.

The ensuing silence and the calm set of his shoulders suggest that the third demon has been dispatched just as easily as the second. Tripitaka notes this with a strange sort of detachment, wondering when she became so numbed to death, when she started seeing it as just another part of what they do. She shouldn’t feel as hollowed out and calloused as she does, even for demons as deserving of it as these. She was raised by monks; she should feel compassion. Instead, she just feels empty.

Monkey barely sees her, though. He’s looking at Sandy like she’s the one who killed them all, like she fought the whole battle all by herself. Her knees buckle just a little when he claps a hand on her shoulder, but she stays standing.

“I promise you,” Monkey says, soft and low and for Sandy’s ears only, “this time, we _will_ get answers.”

Sandy looks down at the demon, watches it struggle against the edge of her scythe.

“This time,” she echoes, sounding small and lost, like maybe she’s not quite there.

Monkey nods. “I’ll make sure of it,” he says. “This time, I’ll be as strong as you.”

*

They tie the demon to a tree.

It doesn’t seem particularly bothered, much to Monkey’s irritation. He ties its bonds tight enough to leave marks on scaly, serpentine skin, to cut off its circulation if it has any, all the while growling and grumbling that it deserves far worse. Tripitaka silently agrees, but doesn’t want to endorse this sort of behaviour, and so she keeps the thought to herself.

Not that it makes any difference, really. The demon only laughs at his efforts to make it uncomfortable, then leers at the blood on Sandy’s shirt with hunger in its slitted eyes. Tripitaka halfway expects Monkey to cut it down for that, right then and there, but he doesn’t. True to his word, he shows strength and patience.

He keeps the demon’s weapon in his hand, a keen axe-like blade fixed to a short handle. The blade looks sharp enough to kill in a single blow, but they all know better than to expect it will.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Monkey says. He sounds calm, and maybe he can fool the demon, but he’s not fooling the people who know him. “You’re going to tell us how to cure her—” He takes a short step back, swinging the weapon with exaggerated carelessness. “—or I’m going to get creative with this thing, and you’re going to find out the hard way exactly how it feels to die slowly and painfully.”

Tripitaka desperately hopes that’s an empty threat, but seeing the violence and hate burning behind his eyes, she wouldn’t place any bets on it.

Slumped against her, loose-limbed and heavy-headed, Sandy says, “I wouldn’t recommend that option. It’s not pleasant.”

“It’s not supposed to be pleasant,” the demon snorts. The smile hasn’t left its face, not even for a second. “It’s supposed to be unbearable. It’s supposed to make you gods pray for the mercy of death.”

Sandy thinks on that. “Close,” she admits quietly, then gazes at Tripitaka like she’s the whole world. “But no.”

Tripitaka leans in, wraps her arms around her, and forces back tears. She can feel the stuttering staccato rhythm of Sandy’s heartbeat, and wishes that she didn’t feel so much like a fraud.

“I’m here,” she whispers, soft and sweet and trying so, so hard.

Sandy frowns. “Where else would you be?”

Tripitaka laughs tearfully, and holds her like both their lives depend on it.

Above them, Monkey and the demon are still trying to out-bravado each other. Monkey is leaning in closer and closer, teeth bared and muscles bunching in his arms and shoulders, brandishing the demon’s weapon like he knows the glint of steel is more of a threat than anything he can say.

And perhaps it is; the demon stops smiling, eyes on the blade as it flashes, and when it speaks again it’s with rather less confidence than it had a few moments ago.

“Those weapons were forged to harm gods,” it says, and though its eyes never leave the weapon still its voice is a sneer. “Not demons.”

“Oh yeah?” Monkey swings the thing again, brings it down in a smooth fluid arc until it’s a hair’s breadth from the demon’s neck. He stops with an expert’s control, a split-second before making contact, but the demon still flinches, and that tells them all they need to know. “You willing to bet your life on that? Not sure I would, if I were in your position.”

“I know I wouldn’t,” Pigsy chimes in cheerfully. “Bad enough, the long painful death, but just think of the _humiliation_.”

“My kind don’t get humiliated,” the demon growls.

“Really?” Monkey growls right back. “Because you’re tied to a tree, at the mercy of the same gods you torture for fun. I’d call that pretty humiliating, wouldn’t you?”

Pigsy nods sagely. “You’ll be a laughing stock.”

“Not to mention the slow, painful death thing.”

“Righto. Can’t forget that part.”

“It’s not my favourite part,” Sandy says softly, and the broken, miserable look on her face spurs the others back to business.

“Right.” Monkey leans in again. The smirk is gone now, and in its place is a snarl. “No more chit-chat. Talk, or die.”

The demon contemplates. Briefly, breathlessly, Tripitaka wonders if it really is going to push its bravado to the limits.

She doesn’t know as much about dealing with demons as Monkey or the others do. For all she knows, their pride outweighs their survival instincts; she’s known humans like that, willing to die for their ideals or to avoid being proved wrong. For all she knows, this one — like the last — would happily take its secret to the grave if its survival meant Sandy’s too. For all she knows...

The silence seems to stretch on forever, and her fear along with it.

She watches as Monkey’s hand starts to shake where he grips the weapon; she can see the sweat beading on his brow, the effort of holding himself in check. He won’t hesitate to deliver the killing blow, she knows — after what they’ve been through, she’s certain he would relish it — but he’s staying in control for Sandy’s sake. Even the demon must see how much it’s taking out of him, though, sustaining the self-discipline not to kill.

Maybe that’s what loosens its tongue in the end: looking Monkey in the eye and seeing beyond all doubt that he’s just itching for an excuse to make it suffer. Tripitaka doubts she could hold onto her stubbornness when faced with Monkey at his most furious; she doubts anyone could. Demons are not so different from humans in that, it seems, and judging by the way its gaze follows the blade of its own weapon, perhaps they’re not so different from gods either.

“Fine.” Its voice is high, mocking; even now, it will not allow them a victory. “Pitiful, really, that you’d resort to begging.”

“Doesn’t look like begging from where I’m standing,” Monkey says, and flexes his arm to drive the point home. “Now, spill. Figuratively or literally, the choice is yours.”

To no-one’s surprise, it goes with figuratively.

“Salt water,” it says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You gods take everything so metaphorically. Sometimes maiden’s tears are just what a maiden cries.”

Monkey looks just about ready to run it through just for that, but he holds himself in control, muttering and hissing and growling to himself. Pigsy looks effortful, like he’s trying to figure out a complicated equation, and Sandy—

Sandy leans in, awed and tear-stained, and whispers, for Tripitaka’s ears only, “The _sea_.”

Tripitaka feels a lump gripping her throat, hot coals igniting in her chest. She’s got tears in her eyes as well, she realises, and is not ashamed of that at all.

“The Scholar knew what he was talking about,” she murmurs, rather more to herself than to Sandy.

“He did.” She’s not really crying, but the tears give her eyes a strange, ethereal sheen and her breath is coming in ragged gulps. “He _knew_ , Tripitaka.”

Tripitaka isn’t sure she believes that as literally as Sandy does — for all her talents at rooting out lies, Sandy tends to accept everything she hears about the world at face value — but even she can feel his presence here, his faith and his strength, in a way she hasn’t felt since that night at the monastery.

He can’t possibly have meant _this_ , she knows, when he told Sandy to keep hold of the thing that once brought her peace, but it’s difficult not to want to believe it when his memory has brought them both to the right place. 

Whatever he intended, whatever the true meaning of his lessons, whatever idealistic fantasies Sandy took from it, the fact remains that he guided her well.

Tripitaka has to believe the same will one day hold true for her too.

*

Monkey doesn’t kill the demon, but he does leave it tied to the tree.

“If he gets free, good for him,” he says, in a tone that will not be argued with; this is as much mercy as he’s willing to show. “And if he doesn’t, good for us.”

Tripitaka doesn’t even try to talk him down. She’s impressed that he’s showing any restraint at all, and she’s seen enough of what that particular breed of demons does to concede that it deserves far worse than a couple of hours bound and tied. Eyes on Sandy as she falters and suffers and does not cry, there’s a quiet part of her that can’t help thinking it’s no fitting punishment at all.

“Why salt water?” she wonders aloud, a much-needed distraction from her darker thoughts. “Shouldn’t magic be more... I don’t know, magical?”

Pigsy shrugs. “It’s magic,” he says. “Sometimes it’s this great messy process, a hundred reagents and a dozen incantations and who knows what else. Sometimes it’s just ‘wash it in the sea’.”

Knowing as little as she does about such things, Tripitaka takes his word for it. She tries not to think of the Scholar, guiding Sandy to the place that brought her peace, years and years before any of this happened.

 _A coincidence,_ she decides. _It has to be._

They take a short break, rejuvenated by knowing they’re close, that they’ve been heading in the right direction for a while now, whether they realised it or not. Even Monkey takes a moment to sit down and catch his breath, for perhaps the first time since this started. 

Looking at his face, Tripitaka can see how lined it is, how exhausted he’s become; she can’t imagine how much of a weight off his mind it must be to have finally found the strength and discipline to do the right thing, and to reap the rewards.

“I’m proud of you,” she says to him. She’s speaking very softly — Sandy is dozing with her head in her lap, and she doesn’t want to disturb her — and that only makes the words carry further. “You did well.”

“I did what had to be done.” He speaks softly too, but she suspects his reasons are very different. He still has the demon’s weapon in his hands, and he’s turning it over and over with a troubled look on his face. “I’m going to destroy this.”

“Throw it into the sea,” Pigsy grunts. He’s working on getting a fire started, muttering to himself about lunch, but he glances up for this. “A fitting end for the blasted thing, I’d say.”

“No.” Monkey doesn’t return his glance, nor does he look at Tripitaka. He seems unable to take his eyes off the crude, curved blade. “I don’t want it discarded. I want it _destroyed_.” His fists clench, shaking on the handle. “It will never harm any god ever again.”

Tripitaka chews her lip. She’s not sure whether this is the right time to raise the issue, but the words fall out of her before she can stop them:

“I’ve never seen you scared before.”

She wants to take it back almost before it’s even out, but at the same time a part of her is deeply grateful that she can’t.

Monkey glares at her, jaw tight and eyes burning; for a moment, he seems more furious now than he was when facing the demon.

“I wasn’t _scared_ , monk. I was _practical_.”

“Practically scared for your life,” Pigsy chimes in, with his usual breezy tactlessness. “Nothing to be ashamed of, that. We’ve all seen what those things can do to a god. There’s no shame in not wanting to end up like...”

He trails off, averting his eyes.

Tripitaka looks down at Sandy. She’s mumbling in her sleep, restless and dreaming, and Tripitaka can feel the heat blazing from her even through their clothes. She tries to soothe her a little, pressing a cool hand to her burning skin, to her forehead, her cheek, her neck, but it makes no difference at all.

“There’s no shame,” she says, echoing Pigsy with a sad sigh. “No shame in being frightened of something that’s frightening.”

Monkey doesn’t say anything. He’s gripping the weapon so hard his knuckles go pale, the skin stretched over the bone, so hard she’s sure it must hurt. He stares down at the blade, curved and deadly keen, then looks up and over at Sandy and all the rage and hatred seems to bleed out of him, leaving nothing behind but sorrow and sympathy, _feeling_ , the kind he was so sure would make him weak.

“I told you, didn’t I?” he says, and Tripitaka isn’t sure which one of them he’s talking to. Perhaps he doesn’t really know either. “I said I couldn’t have endured it like she has. Pain...” His voice catches, just a little; she is so proud of him for sharing this much of himself, small though it is. “It’s a terrible thing to have to endure for so long.”

“I know,” Tripitaka says, thinking again of the monks and their kindness, their willingness to put themselves in harm’s way to save others. “If I was a god, I’d be frightened too.”

“But you’re not,” Monkey points out, with weight. “And if they’d got you instead of her, you would’ve died without ever feeling a thing. You would’ve been dead in _seconds_. Just like that, quick and painless. Instead, they got her, and she suffers for days. Just because she’s one of us.”

Tripitaka trails her fingers through Sandy’s hair, sad and thoughtful, feeling the weight of the words like a blow.

“Do you wish they’d gotten me instead?” she asks quietly.

He looks stricken. “Of course not. I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighs. “It’s just...”

“Pain,” Pigsy says, cutting him off before he can put his foot in his mouth. “It’s scary.”

“Yeah.” He looks at Tripitaka, like he’s really seeing her humanity for the first time. “For us more than you.”

“I understand that,” she says.

It’s not really true. She can no more fathom what it means to be a god than he can fathom what it means not to be one. Still, he seems to appreciate it. He tries to soften, only succeeding about halfway.

“But at least we can save her,” he goes on. “Couldn’t have done that if it was you. So for that…”

He trails off, as though not really convinced.

Still, it means a lot that he’s trying, that he’s aware of the impact his ill-chosen words might have had. This has been a learning curve for him, almost more than the rest of them. Tripitaka thought it was all about him coming to terms with his emotions, but now she wonders if it’s something deeper, if perhaps this is the first time he’s been forced to confront his own mortality. Another scary thing for a god like him, she thinks, and easily forgives his clumsiness.

“It’s worth something,” she says aloud, and Sandy hums in her sleep, as though in agreement. “She suffered, but she survived.”

Monkey clenches his jaw, like it pains him physically to think about it for too long.

“We’re going to face worse,” he says. “If you insist on carrying on with this stupid quest. You know that, right? Might not get so lucky this time.”

Looking down at the feverish, shaking god in her lap, Tripitaka isn’t so sure she’d call this ‘lucky’. But she knows what he means, and so she doesn’t say so. Anyway, that’s not the part that stings.

She thinks of the Scholar, of the reverence in Sandy’s voice and on her face whenever she speaks about him, when she speaks about the resistance and their cause. It’s a stark, cutting contrast to the way Monkey speaks now, to the curl of his lip and the way his eyes grow darker. There’s no respect in him, only impatience and something upsettingly close to derision.

“This ‘stupid quest’ carries the hope of millions,” Tripitaka reminds him, angry and disappointed and more upset than she has any real reason to be. “It’s not just about inconveniencing you, Monkey. It’s not just about making you acknowledge the fact that you might just care about other people. What we’re doing, we’re doing for the good of the world. Can’t you understand that?”

He studies her for a long time, then looks down at Sandy, shifting and whimpering in her sleep, the pain radiating from her almost as powerful as the heat. It’s a tragic sight, and Tripitaka is sure she hears a little piece of Monkey’s heart break. Then he turns back to the weapon in his hand, and swings up to his feet.

“I guess not.” He says it very softly, like he’s speaking to himself, but it carries. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a torture device to destroy.”

*

After he’s gone, Pigsy says, “He’ll come around.”

Tripitaka sighs. “I thought I was getting through to him,” she says, feeling the frustration like a physical weight. “I really thought he was starting to understand... or at least to _accept_...”

“He’s getting there,” Pigsy insists. He sounds so certain, it’s hard to argue with him, and his bright-eyed optimism is a refreshing change from Monkey’s scowling and Sandy’s suffering. “He’s just had a lot to deal with over the last few days, that’s all. He’s not about to start sliding backwards now. He just needs to blow off some steam and get rid of that blasted weapon.”

It’s no real comfort at all. “Doesn’t he understand how important he is? Doesn’t he see that the hope of the world rests on him taking this quest seriously?”

Pigsy stares at her for a long, slack-jawed moment. “ _Seriously_?”

“Yes, seriously. He needs to take this quest—”

“No. No, not...” He shakes his head, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, then looks down at Sandy. “Sometimes, I swear she’s the only one of you idiots with half a brain cell.”

Tripitaka blinks at that. Sandy has many talents — more than she herself does, at least — but that certainly isn’t one she would list. “Her? Really?”

“Yeah, really. I mean, sure, she has no idea how to use the thing, but at least she has one. You two...” He laughs, with wry warmth. “How either one of you has survived this long without forgetting how to breathe, I have no idea.”

Tripitaka doesn’t understand, but she feels offended all the same. “Is there a point to all this?” she pouts. “Or did you just feel like insulting us?”

“Both, actually.” He stops what he’s doing, turns away from the fire so he can look her in the eye. “But yeah, there’s a point.”

“Care to enlighten those of us without half a brain cell?” She means to say it lightly, but the sting is still there, in her voice as well as her thoughts.

He shakes his head, like he can’t believe he has to explain it. “You and Monkey, you’re both the same. Like, _exactly_ the same. Neither one of you wants to accept that maybe you’ve become bigger than you planned, that maybe it’s not your decision any more, what other people think of you.”

He turns back to the fire, poking it distractedly with a stick; she suspects it’s just a ruse so he won’t have to see her scowling. “I don’t think—”

“Yeah. That’s your problem.” He lets her absorb that for a beat, then goes on. “He doesn’t want to carry the fate of world on his shoulders — who can blame him, right? Doesn’t mean it’s not there anyway. The world isn’t going to stop depending on him just because he doesn’t want it to.”

Tripitaka bristles. “That’s what I’ve been trying to _tell_ —”

“Right. Yeah. At great length, and giving the rest of us a great bloody headache. But it’s true for you too.” He gives her a moment, then rolls his eyes when she still doesn’t understand. “Look, you can pout and sulk all you want about the way Sandy’s attached to you, but it’s not going to stop her, is it?”

“I...” Tripitaka opens her mouth, then sighs and shuts it again. “No.”

“You don’t want her to worship you? I get that. I mean, the girl’s half-cracked, who would?” His smile is fond, though, and she can tell he’s not really serious. “But like it or not, that’s what’s happened. She lived her life in that sewer, all alone, waiting for you to show up and give her a purpose. Think on that for a minute.” Tripitaka doesn’t need to. She’s thought of little else since this began. “And now you’ve done it, now you’re here and real and not just some figment of her half-cracked imagination, do you really expect her to look at you like you’re just another ordinary human?”

“I...” The admission does not come easily. “I guess not.”

“Uh _huh_.” It might be a harsh lesson, but he has a way of delivering it that cushions the blow a little; what would they do without him, she wonders. “So maybe you should take your own advice, eh? Stop whining about it, and start trying to live up to it. Because she’s going to keep looking at you like you hang the moon, and she’s going to keep feeling all those things for you whether you want her to or not. Best to try and make yourself worthy, don’t you think?”

Tripitaka doesn’t say anything. She looks down at Sandy, unconscious and oblivious, her head resting in Tripitaka’s lap like it’s the only place in the world. She thinks of the awe in Monkey’s voice — such a rare and precious thing — when he realised that Sandy’s devotion was her strength as much as her weakness.

Tripitaka never wanted any of this. She never wanted to become the name or the monk, never wanted to spend her life pretending to be someone she’s not. She never wanted a half-mad god tethering herself to the falsehood, living and dying based on a panicked lie and a stolen name. She never wanted to be idolised or adored or worshipped, no more than Monkey wanted to wake up after five hundred years to find a world in chaos waiting for him to set things right.

But here they are, both of them, whether they like it or not. And just as Pigsy says, those things have happened and are happening and will continue to happen, no matter what they want.

As though sensing the tumult of her thoughts, Sandy stirs in her lap. Her lashes flutter, then she blinks her eyes half-open. It’s hard to tell whether she’s truly awake or just caught between fever dreams, but there’s clarity in her voice, if not on her face, when she whispers, “He _knew_ , Tripitaka.”

And Tripitaka thinks of the Scholar guiding a confused, half-mad god back to the sea in the moment she needs it most. And she thinks of him taking in a lost, abandoned baby who would grow up to change the world, and she thinks of all the things he did in life and of all the things he’s still doing from beyond the grave, all the countless tiny ways he’s still with her.

And she thinks that maybe it’s not so much madness after all, the faith in Sandy’s voice, the delirium dripping off her tongue, the unshakeable certainty that somehow, in some impossible way, he knew.

“You know what?” she says, to Sandy and herself. “I think maybe he did.”

*

Sandy is sleeping deeply again by the time Monkey gets back.

He looks better, unburdened without the weapon that caused them so much distress, and though he never really softens completely, there is a measure of compassion in him when he says, “We’ll move when she wakes.”

Tripitaka watches as he crosses over to the fire, grabs a bowl of Pigsy’s stew without comment, and settles down to eat. She hasn’t eaten anything herself; she didn’t want to disturb Sandy in one of the too-rare moments when she’s actually restful, and in any case her appetite has abandoned her entirely.

She’ll eat when this is all over, she thinks, when they’ve reached the sea and she’s seen for herself how much faith to place in the words of a trapped and bound demon. A skipped meal won’t kill her; she’s only just realising how much of a blessing it is to be able to say that.

“Did you destroy the weapon?” she asks Monkey.

“It’s done,” he says, and the tightness of his voice says to let the matter drop there. She suspects he doesn’t want to think about it any more than he absolutely needs to, and who can blame him? “I’d destroy them all if I could, and the pus-bucket monsters who carry them.”

“One thing at a time,” Pigsy says, gentle and very quiet.

“Mm.” He looks to Tripitaka, angry but not quite as much as she expects. “Tell me, monk: would it still count as protecting the world if we took a detour to end these demons once and for all?”

“Maybe,” she says, with a calmness she doesn’t really feel. “But it wouldn’t get us any closer to the scrolls, and the scrolls are what’s important. If we stop to right every wrong we stumble into—”

“—we’d right a lot of wrongs.”

“And let even more run around unchecked.” She feels her voice rising, heat flooding to her face as the calm cracks and shatters, and she bites her tongue to rein it in. “Monkey, I don’t want to fight.”

“Neither do I. But you’re making it really difficult.”

She lets that slide. “I do understand, you know. Suddenly finding yourself a part of something you never asked for and never wanted, something you never even got a chance to prepare for...” She gazes down at Sandy, touches her face with a shaking hand, and aches. “It’s scary. It’s scary, and it’s hard, and it’s painful. And I know you don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Really?” Monkey deadpans. “What was your first clue?”

“Stop that. Stop trying to deflect.” He growls, but quiets himself, and Tripitaka looks up at him with all the honesty she can spare, all the truth except _the_ truth. “I get it, believe me. I feel the same way. But you are a part of this, whether you like it or not. Deflecting and denying and hiding from it won’t make it go away.”

“Smart lesson,” Pigsy murmurs, with a sly smile.

Tripitaka ignores him. “You’re not in this alone, Monkey,” she says. “We’re all on this quest together. You don’t have to do everything all by yourself.”

He looks at her, then at Sandy, taking in the two of them together, and his face twists with grief.

“People are going to get hurt,” he says quietly. “If I commit to this stupid quest, it means stuff like this is going to keep happening. To all of us. And what if it’s you next time instead of one of us? We won’t have time to run around hunting for herbs that don’t exist. You’ll be dead before we’ve even figured out what happened. And then what?”

He’s clenching his fists, shoulders shaking just a little, and Tripitaka thinks she may be starting to understand where all this denial is really coming from. She doesn’t stand, can’t with Sandy’s head in her lap, but she holds out a hand and locks eyes with him and hopes that’s enough, hopes it’s at least something.

“Monkey,” she says.

He shakes his head, and she thinks she understands that too. “What then?” he asks again, in an anguished whisper. “What am I supposed to do if you die?”

Tripitaka flinches a little, to hear it said so brazenly. She’s tried not to think too much about that possibility, the likelihood of her own death, how weak she is compared to the others. But she was raised by the Scholar, surrounded by men and women who understood that their lives might be forfeit. The disaster at the monastery was a nightmare, but she remembers all too well the look on the Scholar’s face in the moments before he died, the tender acceptance, like it was always inevitable.

She swallows hard, then looks down at Sandy. Her eyelids are fluttering now, face twisting as she fights wakefulness, and Tripitaka knows it’s only a matter of time before she rejoins them, before the meagre peace evaporates and the pain starts anew. It’s pain with an end in sight now, with closure, but it is still pain, and it hurts them all.

“Do what she does,” she says to Monkey, a hushed whisper because a part of her hopes it won’t carry. “Be strong.”

Monkey looks at her, at them. He’s working his jaw, clenching and unclenching in a brutal rhythm, and she wonders what he’s thinking about. He’s a god, she’s only human. He understands what Sandy’s going through better than she does; he knows what pain and death mean to one of their kind. He knows so many things she doesn’t, but sometimes when he looks at her he seems almost like a child, more lost and confused than she will ever be.

She wonders how much of that is his prolonged punishment, and how much is just the overgrown boy who doesn’t know how to take responsibility. She wonders, too, if it really matters.

After a moment or two, he sighs and says, “Easier said than done.” 

Tripitaka shrugs. “Strength is hard,” she agrees. “But if she can do it...”

“She has you,” he says, a little too quickly. “She has her devotion to make her strong, she has that weird infatuation thing. You know? She has all those gooey feelings, the way she cares about you. She has...” And he looks down at her, and his eyes grow soft and his smile grows sad. “She has her great big stupid _heart_.”

And Tripitaka laughs, gentle and affectionate, because how does he not see that they are so alike?

“You have a big heart too,” she says. “It’s just been gathering dust for a few centuries, that’s all.”

“Uh huh.” He chuckles, but suddenly it carries more hope than derision. “Give it a few weeks and I’ll be writing love poems too?”

Tripitaka flushes. “They weren’t love poems.”

“Sure they weren’t.” He sobers, if only a little. “But they did sustain her. Whatever they were.”

“Yeah.” It’s not as frightening as it once was. “I suppose they did.”

They both think on that for a beat or two. She can see the wheels turning in Monkey’s head, can see the moment he reaches the obvious conclusion, the one he should have found a long time ago. And her heart feels so full that she worries it might break out of her chest.

“So,” he says at last. “Maybe I should do that, huh? Embrace my poetic side? Get in touch with my inner sewer-dwelling mess of feelings?”

Sandy moans a little in her sleep, like she knows she’s being insulted. Tripitaka leans over to brush the hair from her face, the sweat and heat and pain. She touches her tenderly, with the same reverence she sees in those too-pale eyes when she’s awake, with devotion and warmth and love, and for once she finds she’s not so afraid.

“I can think of worse things to get in touch with,” she says.

And Monkey looks at them both, and he smiles so, so sadly.

“Yeah,” he says. “So can I.”

*


	6. Chapter 6

*

No-one speaks very much once they start moving again.

Monkey is quiet, edgy and a little agitated, but for once he doesn’t seem especially angry. He sets his usual breakneck pace, but it’s more about determination than frustration now; with the end finally in sight, he just wants to get them there as quickly as possible. Sandy is a dead weight in his arms, too drained by the pain to move very much, and she doesn’t slow him down at all: he is a god on a mission, it seems, and he won’t be stopped for anything now.

Tripitaka tries to keep up with him, but her legs are too short and in any case she’s never had his immortal stamina. She can hear Sandy calling her name every now and then — delirious or just in need of comfort, at this point it’s hard to tell — and she’s not sure whether she feels guilty or relieved that she lacks the speed to catch up and take her hand.

Pigsy lags behind as well, keeping pace with Tripitaka without the excuse of her small size. He’s recovered a bit of his usual good cheer, though, and he sounds almost genuinely happy when he says, “End’s in sight now, eh?”

“In sight,” Tripitaka echoes. She’s more breathless than she’d care to admit, so the words come out a little ragged. “But we’re not there yet. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to start counting my blessings until I see that thing heal.”

Pigsy cocks his head, acknowledging without having to admit defeat. “Doesn’t hurt to look on the bright side, though,” he says. “We’ve not had nearly enough of that lately.”

“That’s true.” For all her caution, it’s surprisingly easy to find a smile when she’s talking to him, when he’s bright-eyed and cheerful for the first time in days. “You should keep doing that. Keep the rest of us grounded with your optimism.”

“Not optimism, mate. I’m not stupid. Just calling it as I see it.”

Tripitaka doesn’t think there’s anything stupid in optimism, even the cock-eyed, idealistic kind, but she doesn’t point that out. He knows what he is; he doesn’t need her waxing lyrical, preaching to the choir about the light he brings to their little group. He knows just as well as she does that he’s their heart and soul, and while she has no doubt that he appreciates a little flattery now and then, she knows too that he doesn’t need it.

They walk on in almost-peaceful mostly-silence, until the river starts to widen and grow brackish, until Tripitaka can smell the change in the air, the tang of salt starting to turn it thick.

Sandy notices it too — even in her weakened state, Tripitaka had no doubt that she would — and she starts to fidget and moan in Monkey’s arms, becoming increasingly restless the closer they get.

“Will you stop that?” he snaps at last. He’s understandably annoyed, but the frustration is gone from him now; he sounds almost amused. “Didn’t we discuss this last time?”

Sandy does not stop. In fact, bolstered by his irritation, she struggles all the harder.

“Let me down,” she says. “I want to walk the rest of the way on my own.”

“Please.” His laughter is dry. He’s not taking her seriously; even from her distance, Tripitaka can tell that’s a bad idea. “You can hardly even stand. Stay still and keep quiet.”

But Sandy is dogged, and she ignores him. Tripitaka watches as she grows more restless, aggravating him on purpose to try and force him to give her what she wants. They’re as stubborn as each other, and just as childish when they want to be; neither one of them will back down and do what the other wants.

Monkey is nothing if not blinkered when he thinks he knows what’s best, and Sandy is exactly the same when she wants something. He keeps right on walking, despite the increasing difficulty, and she stubbornly struggles and fidgets and does everything she can to make the task impossible. Watching them, it’s all Tripitaka can do to keep from knocking their heads together.

She might be annoyed, but the change is so refreshing — so _wonderful_ — that she can’t feel anything but warmth.

“Can’t you just do what she asks?” she says, at last. “We’re practically there. Surely it won’t kill her to walk a little on her own.”

“You don’t know that,” Monkey says, and the anxious edge in his voice says he’s not just being stubborn, he’s worried as well. It’s sweet, if not very well executed. “And besides, she’s being a brat. Aren’t you the one who always says we shouldn’t encourage—”

“That’s when _you’re_ being a brat.” She smirks just a little, then swiftly sobers. “Monkey, please, just let her down. Don’t you think she’s earned the right to finish this journey her way?”

Monkey growls, but he’s rather less inclined to argue with her than with Sandy. Possibly he trusts her judgement a little more, or possibly he’s just getting tired of all the fidgeting and is grateful for an opportunity to surrender with a measure of dignity. Either way, he glowers over his shoulder for a moment, then grumbles noisily to himself and does as she says.

Sandy wobbles a little when he sets her down, weak and unsteady, but she does not fall. Tripitaka scurries to her side and hands over her scythe. Sandy tests its weight in her hands for a second, then plants it in the ground as a crutch.

“You are so...” she says to Tripitaka, then falters and turns away. “Thank you.”

Tripitaka isn’t sure she wants to know what Sandy was going to say. She’s not sure she’s ready to hear it said, the things Sandy thinks and feels when she looks at her like that. It’s one thing to accept that it will happen, but it’s another thing entirely to understand it too deeply. She doesn’t want to look into Sandy’s eyes and see a reflection of what she feels when she looks at Monkey.

She clears her throat. There’s a flush creeping up her neck that she can’t explain, a strange kind of discomfort that isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it should be.

“Come on,” she says, and shakes the feeling away. “We’re almost there.”

*

Closer than she thinks, in fact.

Not Sandy, of course. Tripitaka suspects she can sense every molecule of water within a thousand leagues, and she doesn’t seem the least bit surprised when they turn a corner and find themselves suddenly face-to-face with the ocean.

The relief is a palpable thing, though, and what little strength she has left goes out of her entirely at the sight of it. It pours off her in waves, more potent even than the salt on the air, and she hits her knees with a bone-jarring crack.

“We did it.” The words are a moan, softly triumphant, as though the mere presence of so much water is enough to cure her a little. “We did it.”

Tripitaka kneels behind her, careful but unmindful of the cold wet sand sticking to her clothes and skin. She pushes the hair back from Sandy’s face, looks into her glassy eyes, and chokes on tears.

“ _You_ did it,” she breathes, and it’s pain and triumph and a thousand other things all at once. “You survived.”

Sandy makes a hoarse, dry noise, a cough or possibly a sob, and presses her hot, sticky forehead against Tripitaka’s. “Please come with me,” she rasps. “Please.”

“I can’t.” It hurts to say, a pain in her chest that spreads and spreads until it blinds her. “You know that, Sandy. We’ve talked about it.”

Sandy shakes her head. She’s desperate, more than a little delirious, and Tripitaka hates this, hates that she has no choice but to turn away from her, hates that after everything they’ve been through she can’t be there in the one moment that really, truly matters.

“Please,” Sandy whispers again. “Isn’t it more important for a monk to heal the sick than to be shy? Isn’t it more important to...” Her voice catches, breaks. She’s so parched by now, it’s a miracle she even managed that much. “Tripitaka, _please_.”

Behind them, Pigsy crouches, dropping a heavy hand onto Tripitaka’s shoulder. “She’s got a point, there,” he says, very gently. “Isn’t this a part of your monastic duties or something? Tending to those in need?” He’s got a strange, uncharacteristically serious look on his face. “We don’t know for sure that this’ll really work. If it doesn’t...”

He breaks off, clenching his jaw, like he can’t bear to finish the thought.

He doesn’t need to, though. Tripitaka is thinking the same thing herself, has been thinking it for longer than she’d care to admit.

“If it doesn’t,” she finishes, matching his tone, “you want me to be the last thing she sees.”

She’s not sure which one of them she’s talking to, but they both nod. Pigsy is grim but still gentle, Sandy eager and wide-eyed and aching, like maybe there’s a broken little piece of her that’s still resigned to dying.

“It hurts less with you,” she says, and she is desperate and so, so frightened. “ _Please_.”

Tripitaka swallows hard. Her whole body hurts, her heart most of all.

“I can’t.” She pulls away, closes her eyes, blocks out as much of the world as she can. Sandy’s pain, Pigsy’s gentle encouragement, everything. “It’s not just about monastic tradition, okay? It’s... it’s important. And I can’t—”

True; there are many things she can’t do. Looking Sandy in the eye as she turns her back on her, for one. Turning her face away doesn’t silence her cries, though, nor does it block out the hoarse, choked-out echo of that awful name.

“ _Tripitaka_...”

“I’m sorry.” And she is. More than she will ever be able to say. “You don’t understand yet. But you will one day. I swear it. One day I’ll explain everything, and it’ll all make sense, and you will understand why I couldn’t do this with you now. You will understand, Sandy, I promise. I promise.”

She’s pleading too, she realises, and just as desperately as Sandy. She has no reason to believe anything she says will ever become truth, but she prays that it will. One day.

But oh, the future is a distant thing. And the present is Sandy, in terrible pain and terribly frightened, and Tripitaka is sure that she can hear both of their hearts breaking as she stands up and walks away.

Blessedly, Monkey comes to her rescue. Whether he’s noticed her growing distress or just getting bored with the situation, she can’t quite tell, but either way she is thankful beyond words for the way he slips past and takes her place at Sandy’s side.

“That’s enough,” he says, rolling his eyes at all three of them. “Why are you all so dramatic about everything?”

“Us?” Pigsy rolls his own eyes right back at him. “This from the bloke who started a full-on bar fight over the state of his hair?”

“That was different,” Monkey says, but he declines to explain how. “Look, it doesn’t matter. If the monk doesn’t want to get his feet wet, I’ll do it. I’m just as good as him, right?”

Pigsy bursts out laughing.

Sandy does not. Tripitaka doesn’t trust herself to turn around and look at her, but she can imagine the look on her face far too well. Grief, hurt, maybe betrayal, and that barely-coherent contemplation she wears so well.

“You are stronger, I suppose.” She sounds thoughtful, and deeply sad. “I don’t expect I’m capable of drowning, but...”

“But I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen anyway.” There’s the ghost of a smile in his voice. Tripitaka almost turns around just to see it, but she doesn’t; she doesn’t deserve that. “You made it this far, do you really think I’d let you finish yourself off by something so stupid?”

“I hope not,” Sandy says softly. “But then, you can be stupid too.”

“I...” He splutters for a beat, then clears his throat. “Shut up and get your boots off, will you?”

That’s easier said than done. Sandy can’t even manage that by herself any more.

Tripitaka falters, watching her struggle with a dull ache in her chest. She wants to go to her, to offer her help in this if nothing else, but she’s not sure it would be welcome any more.

Sandy isn’t looking at her — her eyes are unfocused and hazy, so maybe she can’t really see anything, but it’s hard not to take it personally — and the last thing Tripitaka wants is to make things worse by trying to make them better. So she stands back, alone, feeling sad and ashamed, and watches Pigsy labour over the laces and straps.

“You _really_ need a better wardrobe,” he laments when it’s done.

“You’re one to talk,” Monkey chimes in. He’s already stripped to the waist, and he throws his discarded clothes at Tripitaka without a warning. “Might as well make yourself useful if you’re not coming in. You monks got anything against laundry duty?”

Mutely, she shakes her head.

He’s not really as calloused as he sounds, she knows. In his usual clumsy way, he’s just trying to make her feel like she’s doing something of value. She appreciates the thought, if not the barrage of clothes.

Sandy’s follow a moment after, a knot of bloodstained tatters that probably needs more than just cleaning.

She sits there shivering in her underclothes and gazing mournfully at the bundle in Tripitaka’s arms; Tripitaka, in turn, can see the blood on her too-pale skin, the open wound seething in her side. It’s deeper now than it was, the blood crackling with magic, and Tripitaka can only look at it for a moment before she has to turn her face away.

“Sorry for the trouble,” Sandy mumbles. Tripitaka gets the impression that she’s talking more to the clothes than to her.

“No trouble at all,” Pigsy says, answering for the both of them. “Now you two run along and have a nice refreshing swim.”

“Refreshing.” Sandy echoes the word like she’s feeling it out for the first time, like she’s never heard it before and doesn’t really understand what it means but enjoys the taste of it on her tongue. “I do hope so.”

“I’m sure it will be,” Tripitaka says. She sounds stupid, even to her own ears but she has to say something, has to at least try and make things better between them. “Sandy, I...”

“I have to go.” She presses down on the wound with shaking hands. Tripitaka is sure she can hear the magic thrum, the skin seeming to ignite for a moment where she touches. “I have to swim, Tripitaka.”

“I know.” She tries to reach for her, but there’s too much space between them, too much salt in the air, too much of too many things, and her fingers find nothing at all. “I hope this works. I hope—”

“We’ll be rooting for you,” Pigsy interrupts, and hauls her away, leaning in to whisper, “Don’t make it awkward, yeah?”

It’s a little bit late for that, Tripitaka thinks, but she keeps that to herself.

They stand there together, her and Pigsy, and watch in silence as Monkey scoops Sandy up into his arms and strides towards the sea. 

He is never more powerful than when he feels like he’s doing something worthwhile; for all his selfishness and arrogance, nothing looks more beautiful on him than kindness. It is still such a rare thing for him, taking responsibility and doing what’s right, but when he finds it — or when it finds him — it blazes like the morning sun.

“I hope...” Tripitaka whispers again, and leaves the rest unsaid.

Pigsy touches her shoulder, squeezes with his gentle strength.

“Me too,” he says. “Now, come on. Monkey’s socks won’t wash themselves.”

*

Washing clothes is not nearly as difficult as washing wounds.

Pigsy takes the opportunity to throw his own onto the pile. She doesn’t even need to make the suggestion; he just does it. She’s fairly certain that’s never happened before.

“The more the merrier,” he shrugs when she stares at him, then cheerfully sets to work.

Blessedly, he doesn’t question Tripitaka when she chooses not to do the same. She blushes and stammers and tries to explain herself anyway — “I can’t mix my clothes with yours” and “I can only do this with other monks” and whatever other hole-riddled excuses come tripping out of her mouth — but Pigsy does not seem to care.

“Do what you like,” he says. “You’re a grown monk.” He looks her up and down, then amends, “Or you will be soon enough.”

Tripitaka scowls a little at that, and mumbles something about taking some time later to wash her own clothes in private.

And then everything is quiet, nothing but the sound of scrubbing and the rush of brackish water, no voices to distract her from her thoughts, from the guilt and shame clinging to her as stubbornly as the blood sticking to Sandy’s skin and clothes. She tries to shake it off, tries to think of anything else, but every time she closes her eyes she sees the heartbreak on Sandy’s face as she begged her to come with.

She tightens her jaw, tries to swallow it down, but it is so much bigger than her.

“I would have gone with her if I could,” she blurts out. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know that.” He’s not looking at her, though. Tripitaka has an unpleasant feeling that it means he doesn’t really believe her, and somehow that hurts so much more from him than anyone else. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“I know, but...” She sounds so desperate, even to her own ears. It’s almost embarrassing, and it does nothing to help her case. “It’s not what you think.”

And then he does look at her, and there’s a sort of smile tugging at his lips, nothing at all like the accusation she was expecting. He looks amused, like this is all some kind of joke, like she didn’t just break Sandy’s heart in pieces for no good reason, like she isn’t a fraud and a liar and a hundred worse things besides, like she isn’t—

“Seriously,” he says, and the word is as gentle as the look on his face, gentle and smiling and so many things she does not deserve. “You really don’t have to explain. I mean, you’re not exactly subtle, are you?”

Tripitaka’s chest gives a sharp, violent kick. “I’m not?”

“Not even a little bit.” His smile doesn’t exactly widen but it grows a little sharper. “You know, the others aren’t here. You don’t have to save face.”

He’s studying her closely now, like he’s trying to pierce through her clothes, pierce through her skin to unveil the truth. Tripitaka feels devastatingly exposed, terrified of watching the world crack open when her secrets are spilled.

She wants to walk away, wants to tell him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, tell him that whatever he thinks he knows is wrong. She wants to do so much, but he’s grinning at her like he knows everything she’s thinking, like it would be a waste to even try.

“I don’t...” she starts, then flounders. “You don’t understand...”

“Oh, I reckon I do.” And he laughs, and it’s warm and fond and nothing at all like what she expects or deserves. “You can’t _swim_.”

And for a long, wonderful, awful moment, Tripitaka just gapes.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Pigsy goes on. He’s totally oblivious to her slack-jawed disbelief, or maybe he just thinks it’s something else. “I mean, we’ve all got things we can’t master, right?” He thinks on that for half a second. “Now, granted, you seem to have more of those than most...”

Tripitaka glowers, because of course that’s the part that really matters here. “I’m trying my best.”

“Sure you are.” There’s a twinkle in his eye that she hasn’t seen in days now; that alone makes her want to play along. “Really, though. You can’t seriously believe the others would think any less of you if you’d just come clean.”

Tripitaka doesn’t know what to say. She desperately wishes it was the truth, and not just because it put that mischievous smile back on his face. If it were, she’d at least have an excuse for turning her back on Sandy; she’d at least have a reason they could understand. It’s easy to be embarrassed or stupid or useless, but it is so much harder to be none of those things and not be able to say why.

Again, her mind’s eye flashes with Sandy’s terrified, pain-streaked face, her desperate pleas, the tremors in her hands and her voice and under her skin, all over her. She was so frightened and so helpless, and if the only thing Tripitaka had to hide was that she couldn’t swim—

Well. It would be _something_ , at least.

But it’s not true, and it hurts beyond imagining to duck her head and fake a blush and mumble indistinctly under her breath, to shrug and smile shyly and let Pigsy believe what he does, all the while knowing how wrong he is.

“I’m a lot like her,” she confesses, and hopes that it doesn’t sound too much like the deflection it is. “Sandy, I mean. I just want to be good enough.”

“Don’t we all,” he says, without judgement.

She sighs. “But I’m human. And you’re all gods. I can’t afford to be the thing that slows you all down.”

Deflection or not, the truth of it seems to hit home.

Maybe that’s why Pigsy looks at her like he believes it completely, like there was never any doubt in his mind at all. The fondess is still there, and the compassion, but he’s a little bit serious now too. Just a little bit, of course — Tripitaka doubts he’s capable of absolute seriousness — but enough that when he squeezes her shoulder again, it carries weight.

“Look,” he says. “You’re the reason we’re moving in the first place. If it weren’t for you, none of us would even be here. You got Monkey out of his rock, you got Sandy out of her sewer, and you got me out of...” He trails off for a second, looking inwards, and there’s a flicker of something deeply tragic that cuts across the warmth. “Well, anyway. My point is, you couldn’t slow us down even if you were moving backwards.”

It’s more comforting than it should be, and much more comforting than she deserves. Tripitaka shakes her head because it’s more than she can bear to accept such kindness.

“Some things, I just can’t talk about,” she says. It’s more of a confession than he’ll ever know. “This is one of them.”

“Water trauma, eh?” And of course he’s characteristically oblivious. Tripitaka isn’t sure whether she feels frustrated or relieved this time. “Well. Suppose that explains why you’re so antsy about the way she feels for you. If her thing is _a_ thing...”

“It’s not...” She sighs, surrenders. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

“Yeah.” He looks so proud of himself, like he’s just figured out some unsolveable riddle. Even if she could tell him the truth, Tripitaka isn’t sure she’d have the heart to burst that bubble. “Figured it couldn’t just be the ‘I’m not good enough’ shtick. That’s her issue. You monks are supposed to be above caring what other people think of them.”

Tripitaka sighs again, heavy and sad. She thinks of the Scholar, of the real monks, and she knows that what he says was as true for them as it is untrue for her.

“I’m not very good at being a monk,” she admits.

It’s the closest thing to the truth she’s ever let out.

And Pigsy looks her right in the eye — maybe seeing that truth, maybe not — and says, with breathtaking conviction, “You’re a whole lot better than you think you are.”

*

It’s a long time before Monkey and Sandy get back.

Long enough for Tripitaka to sneak away and wash herself and her clothes in peace and solitude. Long enough for the sun to do its job too, to warm and dry them both, long enough that she’s clean and comfortable and back in her robes by the time she catches sight of Monkey’s silhouette on the horizon.

Not so long enough, though, that she’s forgotten the pain in Sandy’s voice when she turned away. She suspects there are not enough hours in the world for that.

They’ve made camp a little ways inland, where the water is more fresh than salt, and she suspects it’s taken him a while to find them. That, or he’s been avoiding it.

He’s still carrying Sandy in his arms, and try as she might Tripitaka can’t make out his expression as he approaches; it’s all exertion and strain, the effort of carrying her and keeping his balance with wet feet, and she can’t figure out whether the lines on his face mean good news or bad.

Pigsy doesn’t waste his time on scrutiny. The instant he sees them, he’s up on his feet, knuckles cracking, and blurts the question straight out.

“Well?”

Monkey ignores him. He sets Sandy down by the fire, not quite gentle but closer to it than he usually gets, then waves a hand behind him without so much as a glance. “Clothes.”

Pigsy blinks, then shrugs and does as he’s told, yanking Monkey’s tunic down from the makeshift laundry line and tossing it at him. “Would it kill you to say ‘please’?”

Monkey does turn around, but only to glare. “Not mine,” he snaps. “Hers.”

“Ah.” Pigsy’s scowling now too, just a little, but it’s unburdened now. The fact that Monkey is being his usual bratty self speaks volumes. “You could’ve specified.”

“Or you could have used a little common sense—”

Tripitaka sidles closer to Sandy while the boys are sniping at each other, taking a good look at the wound and a careful, hopefully-subtle glance at her face too.

The latter looks much softer than she remembers, the lines of pain a little less defined; her eyes are closed and very heavy, like she’s halfway asleep. She doesn’t say anything, but there’s a kind of serenity in the stillness that Tripitaka hasn’t seen in her in much too long. She seems almost... rested.

As for the wound, it’s noticeably better. For all the time she spent watching the monks at their work, Tripitaka is no expert at these things, but the absence of magic is impossible to miss, the stillness under the skin as well as on the surface. It’s a wound, no more and no less, and the blood staining its edges is clean and normal and healthy.

Well. As healthy as blood ever is, she supposes. But after so long watching it fester with the hum of magic, the sickly-sticky spreading stain, it’s as close to wonderful as an open wound can be.

Tripitaka inches towards her, a little tentative, afraid of so much more than finding her still delirious. She is afraid of being hated, of being rejected or, worse, unwanted. It’s a strange feeling, and unexpected after so long wishing that Sandy would not want her.

Sandy doesn’t open her eyes, but her body seems to tense a little, the muscles twitching and tightening under the skin until the wound seems to stretch. Tripitaka swallows down the urge to reach out and touch it, to touch any part of her. Not yet, she knows. She needs to clear the air first.

“Hey.” She keeps her voice low, unobtrusive. “How are you feeling?”

Sandy doesn’t move, and her eyes stay closed. “The pain is less,” she says, then stops to think about that. “Sometimes.”

“That’s good.” There’s tension on the air, but Tripitaka can’t tell if it comes from the lingering remnants of pain or something closer to the heart. She wishes that Sandy would open her eyes so she could look into them and know for sure. “It looks better. Like the magic’s gone now.”

“It is.”

That’s Monkey, nudging her aside, arms full with Sandy’s clothes. He’s back in his own now, and he has an odd look on his face. He’s intense and focused as usual, but there’s something beneath that Tripitaka can’t make out. He deposits the clothing in a careless pile, then leans in close to study the wound.

“Looking good,” he goes on. “A couple of days and you’ll be back on your feet like nothing happened.”

Sandy opens her eyes to look at him. Tripitaka doesn’t need to see the haunted ghosts behind them to know that she won’t be forgetting this happened any time soon. None of them will, she suspects.

“Thank you, Monkey.”

“Mm.” His expression grows softer as he looks at her, and when he speaks it’s with the faintest wisp of a smile. “Do you think you can handle getting dressed on your own, or do you need my help for that too?”

“I can dress myself.” She doesn’t sound especially sure, though. “I think you’ve helped me enough for one day.”

“Glad to hear it.” He turns to leave, to give her a little privacy, and gestures at Tripitaka and Pigsy to do the same. “Call for the monk if you need help. He should be good for something.”

“I—” But she swallows down whatever she was going to say, and concedes with a sigh. “Yes. I suppose I’ll do that.”

Looking at her, though, Tripitaka has a sneaking suspicion she won’t.

*

Safely out of earshot, she and Pigsy both round on Monkey.

“Well?” Pigsy says again, impatiently. “How’s she doing?”

Monkey shrugs, like he doesn’t particularly care either way, like he hasn’t given it any thought at all.

Tripitaka can tell that it’s just bravado, though; he’s clearly spent a lot of time and energy asking himself the same question. He all but confirms it when he answers, speaking just a little too fast and with the quiet confidence of someone who has thought it through in graphic detail.

“The wound’s cleansed of the enchantment now,” he says, “so it should heal normally.” He rolls his eyes, not for the first time. “Salt water. _Seriously_. What kind of stupid—”

“Magic,” Pigsy says, with a wry, weary smile. “Go figure.”

Monkey grunts, clearly as unimpressed by that explanation as Tripitaka. It weighs heavier on him, though, like there’s more to the disgust than simple disapproval. He’s glancing back at the secluded little copse where they left Sandy and her clothes, and for a long moment he just clenches his jaw, like he’s trying to decide whether to share his feelings or not.

Tripitaka doesn’t expect him to, not for a second, but apparently he’s grown more than she gives him credit for, because he growls, takes a deep breath, and blurts out, “You should have heard her scream when we went in.”

Tripitaka winces. “Bad?”

He nods, and his jaw pales again. “It could’ve shattered glass.”

“Salt in open wounds,” Pigsy says, with a shrug and a strained smile. “Works wonders, but it hurts like a...” He trails off, and so does the smile. “Well, it hurts a lot. Can’t say I’m surprised that those demons had a twisted sense of humour, right down to the last.”

“Twisted,” Monkey repeats, voice tight and angry. “That’s the polite word for what they are. If I ever see one of their kind again, I will kill them without mercy.” He shoots Tripitaka a hard look. “Any objections, holy man?”

Tripitaka doesn’t answer. She doesn’t want to give a voice to the vengeful, un-monk-like feelings inside her. 

“But how’s she _doing_?” she asks instead, swallowing hard. “Emotionally, I mean. She was so quiet. So...”

“No idea.” Monkey looks pensive, and still a little bit angry. “Even if she was willing to talk to me, which she’s not because I’m not _you_...” His voice grows tighter still, thick with something like jealousy, though he has to know there’s nothing to envy in that. “Well, it’s not like I’ve ever heard a coherent sentence from her anyway.”

“Harsh,” Pigsy says. “I mean, not wrong. But harsh.”

Monkey ignores him. He studies Tripitaka for a moment, then looks down at the ground. “We’ll need to stay here for a while,” he says, like it’s already been discussed and decided. “Give that thing the time it needs to heal properly. The magic might be gone, but it still needs care. And it’s—”

His voice cracks. His throat convulses as he tries again, but that’s as far as he seems able to get.

Tripitaka finishes for him. “—it’s not the only one.” 

“Amen to that,” Pigsy says. “I think we’ve all earned a break after this.”

Monkey bristles at the implication, of course, because that’s just the way he is, but he must be feeling it as deeply as they are because he doesn’t even try to argue.

“We’ve been on this stupid quest for five minutes,” he mutters, and Tripitaka fights to keep from bristling too, at ‘stupid’. “And we’ve already nearly lost one of our own.”

“It wasn’t the quest that did that,” Tripitaka reminds him. “It was the demons. The same demons we’re trying to rid the world of. That’s why we’re on this ‘stupid quest’ in the first place, Monkey. You know that. We’ve talked it through a thousand times.”

“Yeah.” He’s angry, but it’s not as destructive as usual, or as overpowering. There’s something new in him now, not quite patience but surprisingly close, something with a little bit of room to grow. “I just think it’d be more effective to wring their necks. All this running around, searching... it’s so damn _passive_. And if I have learned anything from watching the life bleeding out of her, it’s that I really don’t like being passive.”

Tripitaka knows that about him, certainly, though it didn’t take this ordeal to make her see it. She figured it out almost the moment he broke free from his stone prison.

“There’s nothing passive about searching,” she tells him, and hopes that it sounds like the wisdom of a monk and not the fool-hearted idealism of a girl with no idea what else to say. “We have a goal, we have a destination. Every step brings us a little bit closer to both.”

Monkey’s scowl says he doesn’t really agree, but at least he doesn’t try to argue this time.

He really is trying to grow, she thinks, if he’s letting wisdom and patience roll off him, giving it time to sink in rather than lashing out and trying to beat it to a pulp just for coming near him. It says so much about him, about the journey they’ve all been forced to take over the last few days.

“I suppose it’s fitting,” he mutters at last. “That it’d be her, I mean.”

Tripitaka blinks at the change of subject, but she doesn’t push it. Let him take some time to process in private, if that’s what he needs. At least he’s not throwing things.

“Why do you say that?” she asks instead.

He shrugs, stoops a little to look her in the eye. “You know she’d die with a smile on her face if she thought she was doing it for you.” Though the words are hard, his voice is the opposite. Tripitaka is starting to wonder if he understands Sandy and her devotion rather better than he’d care to admit. “Better her than one of us who actually values our own lives.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Pigsy muses, then starts as he realises what he’s just said. “I mean, uh... better still if it’s none of us, eh?”

Tripitaka pretends she didn’t hear that.

Monkey seems to take the same view. He’s looking at her, like Pigsy never spoke at all. “You should spend some time with her,” he says, surprisingly thoughtful. “She _really_ wanted you to be there.”

“I know.” She can feel Pigsy’s eyes on her, and she has no doubt that he’s smirking a little, but she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him. “But it’s done. I did what I had to do. I can’t change it now.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Monkey says. “I’m just asking you to make up for it a little bit.” His smile turns a little wry, like he’s trying to cushion the blow. “Come on. You know you’d be yelling at me to do that if I’d done what you did.”

Tripitaka opens her mouth, then sighs and concedes. “Maybe.”

“Uh huh.” He cuts another glance back towards Sandy’s little copse. “Look. She’s out of the water now, and hopefully at least halfway back into her clothes. You’ve run out of prudish excuses. So be a good monk and spend some time with her. Let her kiss your boots or write some more of her stupid love poems, or whatever she wants.”

Tripitaka sighs. “It’s not... I...”

“Oh, does it makes you _uncomfortable_?” That’s not really it, at least not exactly, but it’s close enough that she doesn’t deny it; if nothing else, it’s an emotion he understands. “So look at it this way: at least she’s still alive to make you feel that way. Would you really prefer it the other way?”

Tripitaka hasn’t really thought about it like that, but now that he’s said it she can’t think of anything else. Her stomach twists, and all of a sudden Sandy’s blind adoration doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.

“You make a good point,” she sighs, and can’t help adding, “for once.”

“First time for everything,” he says with a self-deprecating smile. “So what are you waiting for? Be a real monk, and go do the right thing.”

*

With only a little reluctance, she does.

Sandy is almost entirely dressed, thankfully. She’s pulling on her boots, fumbling clumsily with the straps and laces, like she’s shaking off a kind of paralysis, and she’s murmuring softly to herself, oblivious as always to the world around her.

Tripitaka watches briefly from a safe distance. She feels awkward and uncomfortable, like she’s stumbled head-first into a private moment, but Sandy doesn’t even seem to notice she’s there. That, or she’s ignoring her on purpose.

She seems to be focused on her breathing, eyes sliding shut on every inhale, like she needs to concentrate her entire being on the task, like it’s still such a terrible effort, even without magic and blood and pain making it that much harder.

Tripitaka takes a breath too, and finds she can’t hold it in. “Sandy?”

Sandy keeps her head down, eyes on her boots, lashes fluttering in time with her breath. “I’m well, Tripitaka. You don’t need to keep checking up on me.”

“I know. But I want to. I want...” She wants so many things, but they’re all so far out of reach. “Are you angry with me?”

“No.”

But her voice is so flat, so utterly toneless, Tripitaka can’t help wondering.

“I’d understand if you were,” she says. “You know that, right?”

“I’m sure you would,” Sandy says, still toneless, still so vacant. “You understand many things.”

Her jaw is tight, and Tripitaka can’t tell whether it’s the tension of the moment or just the struggle with her boot. She’s not really sure she wants to.

“Can I help with that?”

“I’ve done it before,” Sandy says. “Many, many times. I know how shoelaces work.”

“I don’t doubt that. I just thought...” Tripitaka sighs, then shakes her head. Clearly, the subtle approach isn’t getting them anywhere. “You know I would’ve gone with you if I could have. I would have given anything to be with you. I would have—”

“Untrue.” At long last, she does look up, and her eyes are so tired. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Tripitaka sighs. “Sandy...”

“No. The fault is mine, Tripitaka, not yours.”

“You... huh?”

Sandy studies her for a moment, frowning, like she’s trying to gauge her sincerity, trying to figure out if the confusion is genuine or if it’s some kind of deception. Apparently content that it’s the former, she sighs and continues.

“I should never have put so much of myself on your shoulders. I was in pain and frightened and it was very difficult to think clearly.” She swallows thickly, like she’s fighting tears, then turns her face away, under the pretense of working on the other boot. “But that’s not an excuse for burdening you, and I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t...” Automatically, Tripitaka moves to drag her hands through her own hair, forgetting for a moment that it’s not there any more. She’s still learning too, it seems. “Sandy, you have nothing to apologise for. Really. You were suffering, and all you wanted was someone to make it hurt less. It’s not your fault I couldn’t be there when you needed me.”

“But you were.” She says it like a prayer, or perhaps a confession. “You were there for everything. You held me and comforted me. You made me feel alive when I was dying. I was selfish to ask for more.”

“No, you weren’t. You were—”

She stops herself quickly, though, before she can say ‘human’. For all that she acts like one sometimes, Sandy is not human at all, and that is something neither of them can forget.

“You were in pain,” she finishes instead. “And you were frightened. And you thought you were going to die. There’s nothing selfish in wanting comfort in a moment like that. There’s nothing selfish in wanting—”

“You?”

She says it so simply, so plaintively. Tripitaka’s heart stutters a little, like it doesn’t know whether to flinch or leap.

“ _Someone_ ,” she says, and lets the words dislodge the feeling from her chest. “There’s nothing selfish in wanting someone to be there.”

“But I didn’t want _someone_.” There it is again, that terrible, tactless honestly, and Tripitaka wants to laugh and hide at the same time. “I wanted _you_. Even when Monkey was there. Even when he tried so hard to be like you.” She ducks her head again, and though her pale skin doesn’t quite muster a blush, still the shame is palpable. “You would’ve been so proud of him, Tripitaka. He tried so hard, and he was so gentle. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t make it hurt less like you do.”

Tripitaka can’t imagine Monkey trying to be gentle, much less actually succeeding, but the thought of it makes her feel warm inside.

“He cares more than he’ll ever admit,” she says.

“He does.” Sandy sighs heavily, then touches her chest as though it still hurts a little to breathe. “And that is why I’m sorry. Because he did everything right but he still wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to want you. I wanted to want _someone._ Even him. But I don’t...” She swallows, chokes a little. “I don’t know how.”

Tripitaka thinks about that. About a life lived underground, hiding in the shadows. About a young, confused, lonely god with nothing to live for but the promise of a name. About devotion and worship and love, about all the things she sees in Sandy’s eyes and wishes so desperately she didn’t understand.

“Sandy.” It sounds like a plea, not like a name at all. “I know why you feel the way you feel. I really do. You were alone for a long, long time, just waiting for... for me. I know that my name was a symbol to you.”

“More than a symbol,” Sandy says, sounding a little broken. She swallows, like she’s sick or maybe starved. “It was the only world I knew. The only thing I had to nourish me. You were everything, Tripitaka, even before I met you.”

Tripitaka swallows down her own feelings, leans in to touch the curve of Sandy’s face. She’s not sure if they’re really there yet, but she has to touch her, just a little. She has to remind herself that Sandy is alive, that she can breathe and talk, that she’s not about to die; she has to remind Sandy that she’s here too, and that she’s not going anywhere.

The skin on her face is cooler now than it was, but there’s still warmth there, the dying embers of fever throbbing dully against Tripitaka’s palm; just like the wound, it will fade naturally now, with time and care. She hopes the same will hold true for the rest of her, the fractures in her mind and her heart, the damage from all those years of solitude.

“That life is over now,” she says. “I’m here. _We’re_ here.”

Sandy thinks about that, about ‘we’ and what that means. She’s leaning into Tripitaka’s touch, eyes half-closed, her boots entirely forgotten.

“It’s been so long,” she whispers. “So long. I don’t know how to feel anything for anyone except you. I don’t know how to _want_ anything except—” She stops, shakes her head just a little, and suddenly her eyelashes are wet. “I waited so long…”

“I know.” And there are so many things she wants to say, so many ways she wants to push her away and deny this, but she doesn’t. She leans in closer, presses a kiss to Sandy’s forehead, and says, “But you don’t have to wait any more.”

Sandy gazes at her, eyes pale and ethereal and exhausted; they seem to glow when she finds a smile. She looks so small and so complete at the same time, and Tripitaka finds that she can barely breathe for the sight of her.

“Tripitaka...”

It’s so much more than a name. It is a plea and a prayer and a promise; it is something painful and so, so powerful.

And Tripitaka shapes the syllables on her tongue, silent and secret, the name that isn’t hers, the name she did not earn and does not deserve, and she thinks about all the things it means, all the world’s hopes hanging on how well it fits her. And she thinks that the name is so much bigger than the tiny, lost young woman who wears it.

And she thinks of Monkey, proud and arrogant, opening himself up to his emotions, to becoming something he never asked for and never wanted, to accepting weakness for the first time as part of his strength.

And she thinks of Pigsy, of all those years spent bowed and bent under a demon’s thumb, of the courage it took for him to break free, to change and grow, of all the warmth and compassion he has inside of him, blossoming even in the dark, just waiting for a chance to shine.

And she thinks of Sandy, lost and lonely and halfway mad, waiting her whole life for a name, for a monk, for _Tripitaka_.

And she thinks of herself, just as lost and lonely, just as close to madness, and she thinks of the name, the only thing she has and it’s not even hers, this name that means nothing to her and everything to everyone else, to gods and humans alike. And she thinks of growth, learning, of these three hopeless, broken idiots who are her friends, each slowly becoming so much more than they were.

And she thinks of Tripitaka, of the monk who died and the meaning that has to live on, of everything _he_ needs to be and everything _she_ is not.

And she takes Sandy into her arms, and she traces the lines on her face, the slowly-fading marks of pain and strength. And she listens to the ragged thrum as her heartbeat slows and grows steady, and she thinks of her blinding, battered, beautiful faith, of love and hope and the unbearable weight of a name.

And she closes her eyes and thinks of her reflection in the river, in the sea, of who she is and isn’t, of who she needs to be and what she does not want to be. And she feels Sandy grow slack in her arms, breathing without pain for the first time in too long, at peace at last with the name on her lips, _Tripitaka_ , with all its power and its myriad meanings.

And it is not her.

But it is what they see, and it is what they need. Monkey with his anger and his barely-hidden feelings. Pigsy with his warmth and his courage. Sandy with her boundless devotion, her terrifying love.

The name is their hope, their tether to each other and to something so much bigger than any of them.

But it is not the name that holds Sandy close now, and it is not the name that whispers in her ear and promises not to leave her, and it is not the name that told Monkey there was strength in being weak.

It was not a name that did those things. It was just her.

But if the name is what they have to see, what they have to believe in, if _Tripitaka_ is what it takes to help them grow and learn, to help them survive...

Well.

That, she can accept.

***


End file.
